It includes a brief description of the methods that are currently employed and the methods that hold promise for the complete cure of brain cancer in the future

1. Current and Future Strategies for the
Treatment of Brain Cancer
Qureshi Asad Iqbal Ahmed
BPA700270
Mentor: Mohammed Ismail Mouzam

2. Types of Brain Tumor

3. Current Strategies for Brain Cancer
Treatment
The current treatment strategies include options like
 Surgery
 Radiation Therapy
 Chemotherapy

4. Surgery
 Surgery can be either done for biopsy or resection.
 It can prolong life up to 6 months.
 Allows for enhanced exposure to chemotherapeutic agents and radiation therapy.
 It may also include placing of shunts into the brain.

5. Radiation Therapy
 Done to supplement surgery to remove the remnant minor tumors or to attack the tumor that is
in a non-operable region of the brain.
 Over the course of conventional radiation therapy, patients are exposed to 180-200 cGy per dose,
5 days of the week for 6 weeks. This makes a total of 5400-6000 cGy treatment.
 Boron Neutron Capture Therapy uses thermal or epithermal neutron beams to activate a boron
drug concentrated in tumor cells causing instability of boron which then emits harmful radiation
into the surrounding tumor cells.
 Radiosensitizers are drugs that make tumor more sensitive to radiation therapy.

6. Chemotherapy
 Prolongs life in patients with anaplastic tumors
[that lack borders for identification]
 It is not curative, goals of treatment are to control
growth of tumor and to maintain good
performance and quality of life of patient for as
long as possible.
 Not all tumor cells are responsive to
chemotherapy. Also Chemotherapy causes
damage to bone marrow of patient.

7. Future Strategies for Brain Cancer Treatment
 Stem Cell Therapy
 Nanotechnology
 Bio-markers and Personalized medicine
 Gene Therapy

8. Stem Cell Therapy:
 Some tumor cells have Stem Cell like qualities
like proliferation, rapid growth, recurrence
and resistance.
 These cells show markers [CD133] which are
highly resistance to radiation and TMZ
 They are also responsible for drug efflux
 Traditional MTD therapy can aggravate the
tumor proliferation and hence attacking the
cancer stem cells is top priority.
Nanotechnology:
 Its potential for drug delivery is the main
reason of its use in cancer therapy
 Iron oxide nanoparticles are currently widely
used for visualization purposes in brain MRIs
and other procedures.
 Novel temperature regulating nanoparticles
[Zn-Co-Fe] have recently been discovered
which involve heating the cancer cells enough
to kill them

9. Biomarkers and Personaliised Medicine:
 Predictive biomarkers deternine the likelihood
of response to a treatment.
 A well known biomarker is MGMT, a DNA
repair gene.
 Several hurdles must be overcome prior to
widespread use of biomarkers, including
reproducibility, sensitivity and specificity of
biomarker assays.
Gene Therapy:
 Gene therapy can be defined as the use of
nucleic acids as drugs. It can modify the
genetic make-up of the target cancer cells.
 In order to deliver therapeutic genes to cancer
cells vector systems [viral or non-viral] are
used.

10. Various vectors used for Gene Delivery
Viral Gene Delivery:
 Adenovirus vectors
 Herpes Simplex Virus vectors
 Retroviral vectors
 Sindbis virus/ Influenza virus/ Epstein Barr Virus etc.
Non-Viral Gene Delivery:
 Naked DNA
 Liposomes
 DNA complexed to proteins/polymers

11. References
 Maryam Rahman; Brian Hoh; Nathan Kohler; Erin M Dunbar; Gregory JA Murad, The Future of Glioma
Treatment: Stem cells, Nanotechnology and Personalised Medicine Future Oncology 2012; 8(9):1149-
1156.
 M.G. Castro, R. Cowen, I.K. Williamson, A. David, M.J. Jimenez-Dalmaroni, X. Yuan, A. Bigliari, J.C.
Williams, J.Hu, P.R. Lowenstein, Current and Future Strategies for the treatment of Malignant Brain
Treatment, Pharmacology & Therapeutics 98 (2003), 71– 108
 Polyak K, Hahn WC. Roots and stems: stem cells in cancer, Natural Medicine 12(3), (2006), 296–300
 Galanis E, Wu W, Sarkaria J et al. Incorporation of biomarker assessment in novel clinical trial designs:
personalizing brain tumor treatments. Current Oncology Reports 13(1), 42–49 (2011).
 Orringer DA, Koo YE, Chen T, Kopelman R, Sagher O, Philbert MA. Small solutions for big problems:
the application of nanoparticles to brain tumor diagnosis and therapy. Clinical Pharmacology
Therapeutics 85(5), 531–534 (2009).

12. THANK YOU