Scientists working with the National Foundation for Cancer in the USA have had a worrying moment of honesty. They are developing an agent to help radiotherapy kill more cells in brain cancer patients. Why? Because cells that survive radiotherapy currently, in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) patients, become MORE AGGRESSIVE.
Of course, to my knowledge, GBM patients are never told this.
Dr. Paul Fisher, director of the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Institute of Molecular Medicine and Dr. Web Cavenee, director of the Kudwig Institute for Cancer Research at UCSD have been looking at the genetic suppression of the melanoma differentiation-associated gene (MDA-9/syntenin) to improve the response to radiotherapy.
As usual, it will be a number of years before anything useful comes of this – and the research was only conducted in mice.
Chris Woollams, Former Oxford University Biochemist and founder of CANCERactive added, "The fact is that oxygen has been shown several times in research to work well as a pre-sensitising anti-cancer agent. Oh, and a low calorie, low carb diet. Oh, and curcumin. Oh, and melatonin (even the mighty Sloan Kettering say this!) Researchers at Kansas State University even showed radiotherapy killed more cancer cells if patients had undertaken exercise before the radiotherapy".
Go To: 20 tips to improve the success of your radiotherapy and reduce its side-effects
However, this is the first time an important medical body has admitted that radiotherapy makes GBM more aggressive. It’s just a shame they aren’t widely read on what is already known to improve radiotherapy success rates.