Childhood Brain Cancer: an overview for normal people, in normal English

I never realised the field of Childhood Brain Cancer was so huge, until I started the research for this blog post today. And it's no wonder; the first thing I learned is that around half of childhood cancers are either leukaemias (blood cell cancer), or cancers of the brain and central nervous system.

That means that a huge amount of research has been done on brain cancer in general, and quite a bit on childhhood brain cancer in particular. And so I decided that this topic needs to be broken up into a few articles. As I learn more, I'll share it with you.

One of the big problems facing oncologists attempting to treat brain cancer is the 'blood-to-brain barrier'. This is a membrane through which all blood to the brain must pass; a safety mechanism built-in to prevent substances passing through that could have an effect of the delicate chemistry of the brain. In a patient with a brain tumour, a healthy, well-functioning blood-to-brain-barrier is an obstacle to treatment with chemotherapy, because the drugs can't get to where they need to be. Usually the answer to this dilemma is to irradiate the area as widely as possible to try to kill the tumour as well as any little bits that may have broken off and are still nearby. In low-grade glioma, a very common type of childhood cancer, radiation therapy has been shown to produce very good results.

Not all brain cancers respond or act in the same way though; some have thus far been resistant to all therapies thrown at them. A new therapy, using various agents known generally as Angiogenesis Inhibitors, is about to enter stage 3 clinical trials on adult patients. So far, the trials have shown very promising results; an angiogenesis inhibitor targets potential blood vessels that could be 'persuaded' by the tumour to provide it with a blood supply. The angiogenesis inhibitor 'switches off' the undifferentiated cell's ability to become a blood vessel cell and the tumour is effectively starved of oxygen and nutrients. Unfortunately, the paediatric version of these trials is only now entering stage 1, and so it will be a number of years before angiogenesis inhibitors are available for children on the commercial market.

In the next few articles I'm going to be talking about the different types of brain cancer, starting with the most common, the gliomas, so stay tuned, I'll be back soon when I've done some more reading.