Medical Treatments Other Than Chemotherapy, Help Fight Metastases

A new study shows that a cancer technique that can help fight the disease when chemotherapy may not be an option can help prevent metastases and decrease complications of cancers involving the brain, according to Penn State medical researchers.

Background information from the study shows that many cancer types that metastasize in the brain-including breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, leukemia and prostate cancer-filter malignant cells through cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and many researchers hope that this may decrease the chance of cancer through spreading towards or through the brain, in which is surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid.

"Most chemotherapies have a difficult time crossing the blood-brain barrier, but cancer cells can if they have the right instructions," said Joshua E. Allen, postdoctoral fellow at the Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute, via a press release.

Previous information via the study shows that researchers have found a way to move CSF through a filter outside the body to catch cancer cells into the patient.

"Currently nothing exists that can filter cerebrospinal fluid -- which, in some patients, contains malignant active cancer cells," said Akshal S. Patel, neurosurgery resident at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, via the release. "This therapy filters all cerebrospinal fluid."

Various treatments for the disease, including chemotherapy, help to increase the therapeutic resistance of cancer cells. Yet filtering cancerous tissue may not prevent malignancies from developing in all treatments.

Researchers looked at a number of tumor cells in nine breast cancer patients who had been confirmed with the metastatic spread to the central nervous system. The number of tumor cells in the bloodstream was then counter.

The study results showed the following, via the release: "Approximately half of these patients had tumor cells that moved through the blood-brain barrier. Allen and Patel found that this movement of tumor cells is not necessarily restricted to later phases of breast cancer, as previously thought.

With this new knowledge in mind, the researchers' proposed method can help treat breast cancer -- and other metastasizing cancers -- earlier and with potentially fewer drugs. This filtering of body fluid is similar to that used as standard care for leukemia, and offers potentially increased cure rates."

More information regarding the findings can be found via the National Institute of Health and the American Cancer Society.