Treatment for Glioblastoma Multiforme

A Revolutionary New Potential Treatment for Glioblastoma MultiformeBy George Lundberg, MD, Editor-at-Large, MedPage Today  | July 19, 2010

Only rarely does an experienced editor get a spine tingle from a new paper. For the first time ever, today, I predict that a Nobel Prize for medicine will be awarded to J. Martin Brown, DPhil, Oxford, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Professor Brown and his colleagues have discovered and reported a fundamentally new approach to the treatment of solid tumors, beginning with the devastating glioblastoma multiforme.
Here is how it goes: Tumors need blood in order to grow. Powerful radiation can kill many cancer cells. It also kills the cancer's blood vessels. How then do any surviving cancer cells regrow after radiation if they have no blood supply? Where do the nutrient blood vessels come from?
Professor Brown and colleagues hypothesized that circulating bone marrow derived cells recreated endothelium, and thus vasculogenesis (not angiogenesis), thereby providing the needed blood for the cancer to recur./.../