MONDAY, Aug. 16, 2004 (HealthDayNews) -- A combination of immune therapy and chemotherapy slows incurable brain tumors and extends patient survival, says a study in the Aug. 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center found this approach slowed tumor progression and lengthened survival of patients with aggressive and incurable brain tumors called glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).
This method lengthened survival to about 26 months, compared to 18 months for patients who received immune vaccine alone and 16 months for patients who received chemotherapy alone.
Five of the 12 patients (41.7 percent) who received the combination treatment survived longer than two years, compared with one of the 12 (8.3 percent) who received the vaccine alone and one of 12 who received chemotherapy alone.
Two patients in the combined therapy lived longer than three years. No patients in the other two groups lived that long.
"We've very excited abut the results. Obviously they need to be confirmed in a randomized trail, but assuming these outcomes are reproducible, it would be extremely gratifying to see this kind of increase in survival for such a devastating disease," researcher Dr. Keith L. Black, director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai, said in a prepared statement.
Although he and his colleagues don't know exactly how this combination therapy works, they believe it's a one-two punch. The anti-tumor vaccine delivers the initial blow against the tumor cells, increasing their vulnerability to the chemotherapy drugs.
More information
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about brain tumors.
