SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Breaching a Barrier to Fight Brain Cancer
from the New York Times (Registration Required)
Dr. Howard Riina threaded a slender tube through a maze of arteries in Dennis Sugrue's brain, watching X-ray images on a monitor to track his progress. At the site where a previous operation had removed a malignant tumor, he infused a drug called mannitol and unleashed a flood of the cancer drug Avastin.
... It was an experiment. Mr. Sugrue, 50, who works for a hedge fund and has two teenage children, was in a study for people with glioblastoma--the same type of brain tumor that killed Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts in August--and was only the second person ever to have Avastin sprayed directly into his brain.
Getting drugs into the brain has always been a major challenge in treating tumors and other neurological diseases, because the blood-brain barrier, a natural defense system, keeps many drugs out.
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