According to this article from the Oregonian, Dr. Neuwelt of the Oregon Health and Science University, the recipient of the Javits Award, is attempting new research for treating brain tumors. Dr. Neuwelt’s research involves treating tumors through drugs instead of surgery, as cutting out a tumor can prove more dangerous and may not even be necessary if the tumor is not cancerous. His research also has to do with attaching drugs to antibodies in order to attack the tumor-causing cancers. Over the next 7 years, Neuwelt will have $3.7 million to put toward finding better cures for cancer and brain tumors.
Neuwelt is also researching whether a certain drug called NAC can keep the effectiveness of tumor cell-killing chemotherapy drugs, while protecting patients against the negative side-effect of damaging bone marrow. Brain and cancer research is ongoing, but how long will it take until we actually see this research put to use with cancer patients?
It is interesting to see how people are so commonly misled to think that brain tumors are only caused from brain cancer. Many tumors in the brain are caused from cancer, but not just from brain cancer. In fact, lung and breast cancers are much more common (up to 10 times) and can result in brain tumors, but are not given as much attention. However, now that there is more research being done on alternative, non-surgical treatments, I hope that more patients with tumors will be treated without the life-altering side effects that can result from surgery.
A thought-provoking article Angela! You make a good point about brain tumors not always being caused by brain cancer, but by other types of cancer that have spread to the brain. I had a friend whose mother passed away from uterine cancer that had spread to the brain. I hope that this doctor's research makes some advances in the field!
ReplyDeleteGlad that he's right here in Oregon--did you find that any other faculty of OHSU had won research awards this year?
wow, thats pretty fast, I remember when I was in high school, my friend was interning with him(2007), and they had just started doing research about that. Looks like they isolated the drug to help with tumor reduction in the brain. The problem with doing that before was they could never find a drug that actually could pass through the blood brain barrier. Shows how fast research and technology is moving
ReplyDeleteThat's very interesting! I'm glad to see they are making significant progress on cancer research. Especially with brain tumors, since they can be so debilitating and delicate due to their location.
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