Roanoke researchers pursue treatments for the type of deadly brain cancer affecting McCain – Richmond.com

Researchers in Roanoke are developing ways to halt the insidious onslaught of the type of brain tumor affecting Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Brain cancers come in a lot of types and flavors. They go from benign and quite fixable to the very malignant and unfixable. The type that Sen. McCain has is unfortunately the very unfixable type, said Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute and Techs vice president for health sciences and technology.

McCain was diagnosedlast month with glioblastoma, the type of brain cancer that scientists at VTCRI are specializing in. Their research is part of the institutes Center for Glial Biology in Health, Disease and Cancer. Glia were once considered the understudy to the brains star cells, neurons or nerve cells, and their role relegated to holding together the neurons. But more is being discovered about the role they play in brain health and diseases, including being the source of most malignant brain tumors.

When glial cells turn cancerous, they take on a unique property: the ability to shrink and slither elsewhere in the brain.

There are a big group of nerve fibers that connect the two halves of our brains called the corpus callosum, Friedlander explained. Its a bunch of white matter and fibers. And they will hop on that and cross over from one side of the brain to another. So the surgeon is over here, and he sees a tumor on an MRI, and he takes it out and does great surgery, getting every bit you can see.

Meanwhile, a couple hundred of those cells are on their way happily migrating to the other side of the brain. They work their way through these little spaces, take up residence and start dividing again. And now you have 10 brain tumors, and its inoperable at that point.

About 80,000 Americans each year are diagnosed with a primary brain tumor, meaning it originates in the brain and isnt from a cancer migrating from elsewhere in the body. There are 120 types of primary brain tumors, according to the American Brain Tumor Association. The vast majority are noncancerous, but since the brain is protected by a rigid, bony structure, even a benign tumor can cause damage by pressing on the brain.

About 26,000 of the new cases will involve a malignant tumor, with glioblastoma accounting for the majority of them.

Compared to lung cancer with 500,000 [people with the disease], its small, but the outcome is uniformly bad, Friedlander said. With the earliest, best diagnosis, by the time you have any symptoms, its big enough to be pushing on the brain and is already millions and millions of cells. So the cells have already moved out.

Most people live slightly more than a year following diagnosis.

Friedlander said theres no silver bullet under development. Rather, researchers are working on a cocktail of strategies.

Harald Sontheimer, the director of the institutes glial center, is working on a therapy that could freeze the migrating cells and another that would keep them from killing neurons, Friedlander said.

Researchers Rob Gourdie, Zhi Sheng and Samy Lamouille teamed up to see if they could make the glioblastoma cells receptive to temozolmide, the standard drug treatment, once it is no longer effective.

Sheng is a cancer researcher who discovered that one of the compounds Gourdie developed for heart disease and for healing bed sores appears to re-sensitize the cancer cells to the drug.

Gourdie said encouraging results in the lab have led them to begin trials on dogs at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. Dogs also form glioblastoma. The trial will help to determine if the combination is safe and effective enough to seek FDA approval for human trials.

We started last last year and have recruited a half dozen dogs so far. Its a slow process, Gourdie said.

Meanwhile, Lamouille was looking at whether other compounds would work to boost temozolmide, and he pulled from the freezer one Gourdie developed years ago but had set aside.

It had zero effect on the cancer, but something else happened: It killed off the stem cells, the ones that travel and form new tumors.

It was unexpected. We were kind of hoping the drug sensitivity thing would pan out, so you have to readjust your mindset to, 'Hang on, it's killing the cancer stem cells,' Gourdie said. Samy really has to take the credit for noticing that and building on it.

Gourdie and Lamouille formed a new company, Acomhal Research, to pursue development as a therapy for glioblastoma and to see whether the compound also kills stem cells for other types of cancer.

Friedlander said that while the lines of research show promise, it will take much more time, a commodity limited for people with glioblastoma.

The most telling thing in looking at how far behind we are in treating it is to look at some of the high-profile people who have had it and died from it, Friedlander said. Theres Sen. Ted Kennedy, Beau Biden and now Sen. McCain has it. These are people of high capacity, visibility and resources, and you can just imagine they or their families could pick up the phone and go to Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins or the best places in the country. The very best care available is woefully inadequate.

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Roanoke researchers pursue treatments for the type of deadly brain cancer affecting McCain - Richmond.com