This Clinical Trial Shows Promise in Treating Malignant Brain Cancer

(HealthDay News) — Radioactive substances injected into the body could provide a better way of treating glioblastoma, the most malignant form of brain cancer, a new review says. The cancer treatment, called targeted alpha therapy (TAT), involves injection of radioactive alpha particles attached to special molecules that seek out cancer cells in the body. Pre-clinical experiments show that TAT increases survival rates by 16% in newly diagnosed glioblastoma cases, and by 36% in recurrent tumors, researchers reported recently in the journal Targeted Oncology. TAT is a more powerful and precise approach to radiation therapy than external beam radiotherapy, in which a machine beams targeted gamma rays through the body at a targeted tumor, researchers argue in their paper. “TAT delivers high amounts of lethal radiation to the tumor at very short range, hitting its target without significantly affecting surrounding healthy tissue,” lead researcher Maram El Sabri, a doctoral candidate with the University of South Australia, said in a news release. “Alpha particles are up to 10 times more potent when compared to standard photon radiation therapy, killing the cancer cells or at the very least slowing their future growth by damaging their DNA,” she added. For the evidence review, researchers...