Chemotherapy may help delay cranial radiation and minimize damaging side effects

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new approach to gene therapy for brain tumors – delivering a cancer-fighting gene to normal brain tissue around the tumor to keep it from spreading.

In a study using laboratory animals, researchers found that medications commonly prescribed for erectile dysfunction opened a mechanism called the blood-brain tumor barrier and increased delivery of cancer-fighting drugs to malignant brain tumors.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, led by Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences, is a step closer to delivering cancer-killing drugs to pediatric brain tumors, similar to the tumor that Senator Ted Kennedy is suffering from.

Researchers conducting a clinical trial of a dendritic cell vaccine designed to fight malignant brain tumors called glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) have found a correlation between the "intensity" of a patient's immune response and clinical outcome, according to an article in the July 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research.

Today if doctors devote a full day to analysis and expert thought, they may be able to provide just half a dozen patients with a diagnosis of the precise type of brain tumour they face. Now researchers at the University of Warwick have devised an automated technique that can give a preliminary analysis of the precise brain tumour type within seconds.

Tests after Senator Edward Kennedy's seizure this past Saturday revealed that the Senator has a Malignant form of Brain Tumor.

A new study from University Hospitals Case Medical Center (UHCMC) finds that elderly patients – 75 years old and older-- with malignant brain tumors are not treated as aggressively as patients between 65 and 75 years old. Furthermore, the researchers find that if patients over 75 years old are treated aggressively, such as with surgery and radiation, they have better survival rates.

Numerous studies have reported no significant relationship between mobile phone use and health. Still there are scientists who believe that the use of mobile phone can cause brain tumor.

Doctors diagnose and prescribe treatment for brain tumors by studying, under a microscope, tumor tissue and cell samples obtained through invasive biopsy or surgery.

A special type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can depict changes in blood volume in the brain that often precede cancerous transformation of brain tumors, according to a new study published in the April issue of the journal Radiology.

Unique human in vitro model (cell culture) research currently underway at the Peninsula Medical School in the South West of England is set to identify and develop therapies for the treatment of multiple tumours in the brain.