New Brain Cancer Drug Giving Hope to Patients

Written by OJ Fagbire

Sunday, 22 April 2007

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A new vaccination called Vitaspen is giving hope to patients afflicted with glioma, a terminal brain cancer with a median expected survival period of only 25 weeks after diagnosis.

Vitaspen is produced using tissue extracted from each individual's cancerous tumors. Using this cancer tissue as a unique footprint for the vaccine, vitaspen is able to target only the destructive tumorous tissue, sparing healthy tissue in the region. This selectivity makes it very attractive to patients seeking to avoid the debilitating side effects that grosser treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy often induce.

Although vitaspen is only in the first stage of clinical human trials, investigators have been very pleased with the promise the new drug has shown. Patients have also benefited from their participation in the new clinical trial. Patients have universally reported no adverse side effect stemming from the treatment, and the drug has increased the survival rate beyond the normal benchmark in 7 out of 8 patients.

Researchers stress that this is only a first stage clinical trial, not designed to evaluate efficacy, only to determine if the drug warrants the more complete stage two testing. Nevertheless, patients such as Cheryl Canagelo, 54, praise the drug for increasing their quality of life. Canagelo boasts that the drug has shrunk her tumors to the point that they were no longer visible on her last MRI.

Lead researcher Andrew T. Parsa M.D, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery at UCSF, " Our goal is to change the management of recurrent glioma from a life threatening disease, in which survival rates are typically 25 to 26 weeks, into a chronic disease with extended survival and improved quality of life for patients,"

Based on the promising initial results, researchers are looking at using a similar procedure on other cancers such as melastic melanoma (skin cancer) and renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer).

The clinical trial was conducted by the UCSF [University of California, San Francisco] Brain Tumor Research Center. Results were presented at the 75th annual meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons in Washington, DC.

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