Breaking through blood-brain barrier to treat cancer

This paid piece is sponsored by Avera Health.

A thin-yet-tough layer of cells around your brain helps protect it – it’s known as the blood-brain barrier. Until recently, chemotherapy drugs couldn’t pass through this barrier in the bloodstream, even when cancer cells could and formed tumors.

Avera Cancer Institute offers patients new treatments for cancers that affect the brain. An example is Tukysa, which can cross the blood-brain barrier and is among the first medical options that can treat specific types of some cancers.

“We have treatments now that were once nearly impossible due to the blood-brain barrier,” said Dr. Jason Jones, a breast cancer medical oncology specialist with Avera Medical Group Oncology & Hematology. “Surgery or radiation were the only choices – and now we have more treatment approaches.”

So far, these new approaches have made differences. Some have led to significant increases in survival chances.

Jones said new treatments also can:

• Reduce the size of some tumors and the damage they might cause.
• Limit side effects and symptoms.
• Provide alternatives to more-invasive procedures such as cranial surgery.

Finding ways to treat cancer anywhere in the body can save lives, and Avera participates in clinical trials that continue providing more information on cancers – including where they recur.

Targeted therapy expands options  

The blood-brain barrier is a network of tiny blood vessels that if laid out in a line would be almost 250 miles long.

“The blood-brain barrier evolved over time to protect our vital brains,” said Dr. Benjamin Solomon, Avera Medical Group Oncology & Hematology. “When we treat cancers that spread to the central nervous system on the other side of this structure, it can make chemotherapy treatments difficult.”

Targeted therapies, immunotherapy and other approaches treat cancers that affect the brain.

Every year, researchers and physicians develop new approaches to fight these cancers such as:

• Precisely targeted oncology drugs, which are created to fight the exact tumor DNA that doctors find in biopsies or surgery.
• Immunotherapy approaches using the body’s systems to fight cancer.
• Combined treatment therapies that use medical oncology, targeted drugs and radiation.

“The blood-brain barrier can stop a chemotherapy medication that can shrink a tumor in the lung for example,” Solomon said. The same medication may not reach a tumor inside the blood-brain barrier.

“Every patient and their cancer is unique,” he added. “That’s why it’s important to tailor each treatment approach.”

Doctors use Tukysa most often against breast cancer that spreads to the brain. It is a targeted therapy that can pass the blood-brain barrier. “Yet not every targeted drug can penetrate the blood-brain barrier,” Solomon said. “Radiation treatment is sometimes the best – or only – option.”

Gamma Knife is radiation therapy that has pinpoint accuracy. It’s so precise that it can be a nonsurgical alternative to eradiating tumors in the brain when surgery isn’t possible. Surgery and traditional radiation oncology are other options. Avera is a leader in this field, bringing in innovative treatments like Tukysa and Gamma Knife as soon as they’re available.

Avera Cancer Institute continues research and clinical trials because of the ongoing changes cancer presents, and the team also has regular multidisciplinary cancer case conferences to compare approaches or suggest novel treatments.

“All cancers are complex; comprehensive cancer care means finding multidisciplinary approaches for every patient,” Jones said. “Avera is making new approaches the standard of care, and that can help more patients.”

Learn more about innovation at Avera at Avera.org/Balance.