"Sci-fi" cancer therapy fights brain tumors, study finds

[groundloop]

Source: CBS News

WASHINGTON -- Although it sounds like science fiction, a cap-like device that makes electric fields to fight cancer improved survival for the first time in more than a decade for people with deadly brain tumors, final results of a large study suggest.

But in the study, more than twice as many patients were alive five years after getting it, plus the usual chemotherapy, than those given just the chemo -- 13 percent versus 5 percent.

The device, called Optune, is made by Novocure, based in Jersey, an island near England. It’s sold in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland and Japan for adults with an aggressive cancer called glioblastoma multiforme, and is used with chemo after surgery and radiation to try to keep these tumors from recurring, as most do.

Patients cover their shaved scalp with strips of electrodes connected by wires to a small generator kept in a bag. They can wear a hat, go about their usual lives, and are supposed to use the device at least 18 hours a day. It’s not an electric current or radiation, and they feel only mild heat. It supposedly works by creating low intensity, alternating electric fields that disrupt cell division -- confusing the way chromosomes line up -- which makes the cells die. Because cancer cells divide often, and normal cells in the adult brain do not, this in theory mostly harms the disease and not the patient.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-therapy-fights-brain-tumors-optune-novocure/

[dhol82]

1. Interesting. Nt

[tenorly]

2. Sadly, it's just another patent Big Pharma will buy in order to sit on forever.

Can't let anything get in the way of the colossal cash cow that cancer has become.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Absolutely! It would kill Big Pharma to let others live. n/t

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Patents only last 17 years. The study ate up at least 5 years of that. . . nt

[sharedvalues]

3. Bottom line: not yet published, strange therapy, but any GBM advance helps

Bad disease so we will take what we can get.

It is a strange therapy, however.

Key article text
"Now they’re in: Median survival was 21 months for those given Optune plus chemo versus 16 months for those on chemo alone. Survival rates were 43 percent versus 31 percent at two years; 26 percent versus 16 percent at three years, and 13 percent versus 5 percent at five years."

[Kolesar]

9. I hoped it was binge watching Babylon 5...eom

[Beaverhausen]

4. A good friend of mine is using it

She is coming up on three years since diagnosis- inoperable glioblastoma multiforme - and her tumors have not grown since she started chemo, radiation and this device.

She has lived longer than about 80% of those with similar diagnoses who didn't use the device.

She has terrible burns on her scalp however, but she is determined to live as long as possible.

[csziggy]

5. That is amazing! Give her my best wishes for a long life.

I lost my oldest sister to glioblastoma multiforme in 1993. Because of her doctoral specialty she had lots of contacts with neurosugeons and allowed them to do experimental treatments that were innovative at the time. She was originally given a prognosis of three months. Because of the treatments she lived nearly a year and a half longer. From published reports some of those same things allowed Ted Kennedy many more months than were normal at the time my sister was diagnosed.

It is exciting to see new treatment techniques - I hope these can be improved upon so that many more lives can be extended.

[sharedvalues]

6. Good luck !

[ChazII]

10. My son will be starting this

in 5 weeks.