Doctors Use Melanoma Drugs to Shrink Brain Tumors by 90% in Small Study
Researchers from Mass General Cancer Center’s Central Nervous System Metastasis Center have devised a way to shrink brain tumors by up to 90% using already existing drugs. The researchers used two cancer drugs approved to treat melanoma to treat papillary craniopharyngioma (PCP), a rare type of brain cancer with a 10-year average survival rate. The researchers recruited 16 patients who had not gone through radiation therapy and gave them cancer drugs targeting the proteins MEK and BRAF, which play a role in cell growth. Surprisingly, the drugs were more than 90% effective at shrinking tumors even though they are only…











