Drugs in Tandem Fight Brain Tumors

A new combination of drugs shows promise of reducing brain tumors, traditionally difficult to treat with medications because the body tries to protect the brain from foreign substances.

The new approach, devised at Yale University, combines a drug that fights cancer with another drug, often used on psychotic patients, that passes through the body’s so-called blood-brain barrier.

The anti-psychotic drug, phenothiazine, seems to limit the growth of cancer cells, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of the small amount of cancer-killing drug that makes it into the brain.

Dr. William N. Hait and colleagues at Yale tried the combination of drugs on 18 patients who had stopped responding to traditional chemotherapy, primarily to check for side effects. The patients had glioblastoma multiforme, a usually fatal form of cancer, which is treated by surgery and then radiation and chemotherapy to kill the remaining cancer cells intertwined with brain tissue.

The preliminary results of that trial are “promising,” Hait said. But additional research is needed before the technique will be ready for general use.