New research may predict when a deadly brain cancer kills some ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The deadliest type of brain cancer eventually kills nearly all of its victims quickly but UAB researchers may have discovered a way to predict which patients will live longer than others.

Researchers examined tumors of patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and found that patients with a higher level of an enzyme live less than half as long as patients with lower levels, according to a study published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

"We reported for the first time that an enzyme, cytocrhome c oxidase, is involved in predicting the survival time of patients that had brain cancer," said the study's lead author Corinne Griguer, associate professor in the Division of Neurosurgery in? the School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The significance of this finding is that now doctors and patients will have more information about prognosis in order to form a treatment plan based on life expectancy, she said.

While GBM patients have been lumped into one category for treatments, the enzyme finding will help categorize the patients to better target those? treatments, she said.

"We can divide the group of patients based on the enzyme," she said.

"Sometimes there are drugs that are not effective and we wonder why, but maybe we are targeting the wrong group (of patients)," she said.

Perhaps there's a drug that works for one group but has been discounted too early, she said.

The study of 84 patients with GBM found that patients with the overactive production of the enzyme lived on average six months. Those patients with lower enzyme activity lived for 14 months. About 25 percent to 30 percent of the patients had the more active enzyme.

Glioblastoma is particularly difficult to treat because it is difficult to remove all of the cancer as the tumor spreads its tentacles into the brain.

It is typically treated by surgery followed by radiation and chemotherapy.

Read more about the study and the science behind it from UAB's Greg Williams.

Source: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2013/04/new_research_may_show_why_a_de.html

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