Seattle, U.S.A. — Since its opening in 2008, the Ben & Catherine Ivy Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment (the Ivy Center) at Swedish Medical Center’s Neuroscience Institute has led the expansion drive of major research projects and expanded treatment options for patients living with brain cancer in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the world. The Ivy Center was founded in 2008 to create a world-class treatment and research facility focused on delivering excellent patient care and advancing progress toward more effective treatments for brain cancer.

While great strides have been made in the treatment of breast, colon and other common cancers, only three new drugs to treat brain cancer have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the past 35 years, and these drugs prolong the lives of patients by only a few months. Such a center was needed at the time, said Greg Foltz, M.D., a neurosurgeon and director of the Ivy Center, because brain cancer had been for far too long a neglected or “orphan” disease.

In fact, today the life expectancy of a person diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most common form of malignant primary brain cancer, is only about 15 months — only slightly better than it was a century ago, Dr. Foltz said. “We felt we needed to focus our efforts on coming up with better treatment options,” said Dr. Foltz. “We felt someone had to champion this cause so we embarked on a mission to get more researchers and physicians focused on this disease. And we did.”

The Ivy Center at Swedish has partnered with and led major brain cancer programs with the Ben & Catherine Ivy Foundation, Institute for Systems Biology, Allen Institute for Brain Science, University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Accium Biosciences and The Elliott Foundation. This has led to a variety of new brain cancer treatment options and research programs for people living with brain cancer in our region. “Previously, none of this existed,” said Dr. Foltz.

Five Years of Progress Made

The goal of the Ivy Center was to create a place where brain tumor patients and their families would have access to the best care and latest clinical research. The Ivy Center has achieved this making it possible for the center’s neurosurgeons, oncologists, radiologists and nursing staff to work in close collaboration with the program’s team of scientists. This collaboration allows clinicians and scientists to provide patients with the best of care as well as direct access to promising new therapies and clinical trials.

The Ivy Center’s clinical team provides comprehensive, integrated care that includes the latest neurosurgery techniques and technology, including intra-operative MRI-guided navigation, precision Gamma Knife radiosurgery as well as the support of a team of physical and occupational therapists, counselors, and other specialists who provide each patient with comprehensive, personalized care.

“People with brain cancer have needs that transcend the traditional requirements of most patients. Care is not just about an operation, it’s not just about a medication,” said Dr. Foltz. “Brain cancer is a life-changing event, so it’s very important from the first meeting that these patients know that we’re there for them, that we care deeply about them and we’re going to provide all the resources that are possible to help them fight their disease.”

Holly Zimmerman, a Bellevue, Wash. resident who has been battling brain cancer and is leading a team in this year’s Seattle Brain Cancer Walk, can speak personally to the importance of the first meeting. “A small seizure led doctors to the discovery of a tumor in my parietal lobe—what immediately followed was brain surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and a very scary prognosis for me and my family,” said Zimmerman. “This disease is unique and it takes an extraordinary team of medical professionals to conquer it. As a one-year survivor of brain cancer, I have great hopes.”

New Strategies in the Search for a Brain Cancer Cure

Over the past five years the Ivy Center has established an international reputation for its expertise in the genetic analysis of individual tumors. At the Ivy Center, a genetic profile is created of every patient’s tumor with the goal to identify each tumor’s individual weaknesses and to develop new, personalized treatment strategies that target these weaknesses.

The Ivy Center’s genomic database — now one of the largest brain tumor research projects in the country — was developed in collaboration with the world-renowned Institute for Systems Biology. This collaboration brings together physicians and scientists in the fields of neurosurgery, neuropathology, systems biology, genomics and biostatistical analysis. Together they are determining how networks of genes and proteins interact in brain cancer to discover new targets for diagnostic tests and treatments.

In another partnership, the Ivy Center and the Allen Institute for Brain Science are creating a 3-D map of gene activity within brain tumors.  These maps can then be compared with maps of gene activity in normal brain tissue to identify which genes are malfunctioning in the cancer tissue. Once these genes are identified the goal is to develop diagnostics and treatments that target these malfunctioning genes.

All data from these projects are being made available online to researchers around the world for free.

The article Brain Cancer Research Leads to New Treatment Options appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure (ABC2) and Exosome Diagnostics are collaborating with leading academic medical centers to accelerate clinical validation of Exosome’s blood and cerebrospinal fluid-based molecular diagnostics technology in brain cancer.

The collaboration will explore the capabilities of Exosome RNA biofluid-based diagnostic technology for early identification, progression monitoring and disease risk stratification in glioma, the most common form of brain cancer.

Brain cancer is the leading cause of death among children and young adults under age 20. This year, more than 200,000 people in the United States will be diagnosed with either a primary or metastatic brain tumor.  There are more than 120 different types of brain tumors, making specific diagnosis and effective treatment extremely complicated.

In many cases, accessing brain tissue via biopsy carries significant risk or is not surgically feasible.  The ability to sample a brain cancer’s genetic characteristics through a blood or cerebrospinal fluid sample could contribute greatly to driving advances in clinical treatment and drug development.

This collaboration will bring together world-leading clinicians, researchers and industry participants to develop the potential of stable, high-quality disease-specific RNA harvested from exosomes found in blood and cerebrospinal fluid. The joint effort will support near-term, in-vitro diagnostic validation of known tumor and immune-derived clinical biomarkers for brain cancer.

“We are impressed with the catalytic approach of Exosome Diagnostics and our academic partners,” said Max Wallace, chief executive officer of Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure.  “The ability to identify and track specific pathway mutations over time could significantly improve brain cancer patient care.” As early as 2007, Exosome Diagnostics’ researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital reported detecting key gene mutations in the blood of brain cancer patients.

Subsequent studies involving a multi-center investigative effort led by Dr. Bob S. Carter, professor and chief of neurosurgery at University of California, San Diego, and Drs. Fred Hochberg and Xandra Breakefield of Massachusetts General Hospital, have shown blood and cerebrospinal fluid exosome populations containing virtually the entire disease-specific population of the transcriptome can be accessed safely multiple times, from diagnosis through tumor progression, without the need for a surgical procedure.

These studies were conducted as part of Exosome Diagnostics’ neuro-degenerative disease program examining biofluid-based exosomes for tumor and immune response genetic abnormalities in brain cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury patients.

“Accessing the stable RNA contained in blood and CSF exosomes gives us a significant advantage when it comes to detecting and understanding genetic changes inside the brain compartment caused by a tumor or immune response without the need for surgical biopsy,” added James McCullough, chief executive officer of Exosome Diagnostics.

“Collaborating with ABC2 helps ensure we are asking the right questions and structuring our clinical studies properly from the beginning for this first critical disease target in our neuro-degenerative disease program.”

Dr. Bob Carter noted, “We are excited about the prospects of this model for collaboration involving a leading foundation, academic partners, and Exosome Diagnostics.  By leveraging the strengths of each arm of this triad, we will be able to more quickly bring tumor specific genetic information into the hands of practicing clinicians.”

In January, ABC2 and Exosome Diagnostics hosted the first in a series of meetings with leading investigators to discuss the state of the brain cancer field, the prospective near and long-term clinical applications of exosome technology, performance requirements and barriers to clinical validation.

Participating in the New York City meeting were senior principal investigators from leading academic institutions including the University of California, San Diego, Harvard Medical School and MassachusettsGeneral Hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins, Yale University, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Henry Ford Hospital, University of Miami, University of Florida and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The article Accelerating New Brain Cancer Diagnostic Technology’s Validation appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

A new study published in JAMA investigated the harmful effects of cell phones on the brain.  The conclusion is less than clear.  People have been debating the effects of cell phones since they were first introduced.  There have been scientists and citizens who feel cell phones pose a significant threat.  There are also those who believe we have other things to worry about.

Investigators from the National Institute of Health conducted a study on 47 healthy adults.  The researchers put cell phones to both ears and conducted PET scans of the brain (an imaging technique that measures metabolic activity in the form of glucose consumption) with both phones deactivated, and with the phone adjacent to the right ear activated, in random sequence. Activation of the right cell phone was in mute mode so that participants were blinded to the intervention.

The study found three key points which will do nothing to resolve the cell phone controversy, at least for now.  First, researchers found that whole brain metabolic activity was unaffected by cell phone activation. Second, brain metabolic activity directly adjacent to an activated cell phone was significantly increased. And third, the researchers have no idea what, if any, clinical significance this has.

It is interesting that brain metabolic activity increases with a cell phone but it is not known if that is bad or not.  It is well known that radio-frequency waves penetrate human bodies, and we now know they activate brain activity, but there is no clear evidence they harm us in the process.   The published data, based on many studies and observations in hundreds of thousands of people, remain open to interpretation. One study in the Netherlands examined the issue in over 400,000 people, and found no evidence of harm.  A meta-analysis in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, however, concluded there was possible evidence of increased risk of brain tumors from extended cell phone use demonstrated in studies least subject to bias. Of course cell phones have only been used by a large portion of the population for a decade or two, so certainly more long-term research is needed.

For now, I guess, the cell phone debate will continue with the microwave debate.  All those radioactive waves may turn us into the Hulk someday.  Or maybe not.

The article New Study Inconclusive About Cell Phones and Brain Damage appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.