Word: glioma
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...biopsy of a suspicious growth in the 76-year-old senator's left parietal lobe revealed a malignant glioma, the most common type of brain tumor. It is diagnosed in some 25,000 Americans a year, and in 30% to 40% of cases, the first sign of the disease is a seizure - as was the case with Kennedy, who has been hospitalized since the weekend, but has not suffered another seizure. "Decisions regarding the best course of treatment for Senator Kennedy will be determined after further testing analysis," the senator's doctors said Tuesday in a statement. "He remains...
Kennedy's prognosis depends on several factors. Most critical is the type of glioma. Glioblastomas are the most aggressive and common type, and only 3% of patients diagnosed with these tumors generally survive five years after diagnosis. Patients with slower-growing tumors have a 25% chance of surviving to five years. It's not clear yet what kind of tumor the senator has, or which treatment option he will follow - the standard therapy for glioma usually involves surgery to remove the malignant lesion, followed by chemotherapy and radiation...
...Temodar, an oral drug, and Gliadel, a wafer embedded with a cancer-killing drug that surgeons place in the brain after the tumor is removed. The wafer dissolves over a period of two weeks and, if successful, destroys any remaining cancer cells in its wake. Radiation therapy for glioma usually begins two weeks following surgery, and lasts for about six weeks, says Dr. Henry Brem, director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who helped develop Gliadel and is not involved in Kennedy's treatment...
Meanwhile, back in his lab, Carson is trying to develop new treatments for a type of cancer called brain-stem glioma. The tumor's location makes surgery difficult and prospects for survival bleak. But those are exactly the kinds of odds that Carson has faced before and beaten...
Identified by neurobiologist Harald Sontheimer, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, chlorotoxin targets glioma cells and blocks their fluid-balancing chloride channels, preventing them from shrinking and then migrating elsewhere in the brain. Sontheimer's group is about to submit a clinical-trial protocol to the FDA. If approved, as many as 30 glioma patients could begin receiving chlorotoxin tagged with radioactive iodine as early as July. If the strategy works, Sontheimer says, "chlorotoxin could become a platform for delivering all sorts of drugs...