Study: ‘Sci-fi’ cancer therapy fights tumors
WASHINGTON - It sounds like science fiction, but a cap-like device that makes electric fields to fight cancer improved survival for the first time in more than a decade for people with deadly brain tumors, final results of a large study suggest.
Many doctors are skeptical of the therapy, called tumor treating fields, and it’s not a cure. It’s also ultra-expensive — $21,000 a month.
But in the study, more than twice as many patients were alive five years after getting it, plus the usual chemotherapy, than those given just the chemo.
“It’s out of the box” in terms of how cancer is usually treated, and many doctors don’t understand it or think it can help, said Dr. Roger Stupp, a brain tumor expert at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
He led the company-sponsored study while previously at University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland and gave results Sunday at an American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Washington.
Dr. George Demetri of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who’s a board member of the association hosting the conference, agreed but called the benefit modest because most patients still die within five years. “It is such a horrible disease” that any progress is important, he said.
About the treatment