Research Finds That Brain Tumors Spread in a Calculated Manner

For the longest time, researchers thought that the process through which cancer spread to other parts of the body, in particular the brain, was random. However, a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California has found that cancer spread to other parts of the body in a somewhat organized manner.

For their study, the researchers carried out an analysis of more than 3,100 brain tumors that originated from cancers in the colon, kidney, breast, lung or skin of more than 900 patients who received treatment at the Keck Medical Center; the patients were treated during 1994–2015.

The analysis revealed that the region where cancer spread to depended on where the cancer had first shown up in an individual’s body. The researchers found that colon, kidney and breast cancers had a higher chance of spreading to the back of the brain where the brainstem and cerebellum are situated, while skin and lung cancers had a higher likelihood of spreading to the temporal and frontal lobes in the brain.

The analysis also revealed that in comparison with individuals with skin cancer, individuals suffering from breast and colon cancers had a higher likelihood of having larger brain tumor volumes. The researchers used these findings to develop a pair of models which confirmed that, depending on its origin, brain metastasis had clear geographic spread.

Brain metastasis refers to the process through which cancer spreads to an individual’s brain. These models may in the future be used to deepen understanding of how tumors in the brain grow as well as enabling physicians to predict where an individual’s cancer may spread and arrest the spread.

In a news release, assistant professor Josh Neman, lead author of the study, stated that understanding the factors that blocked or facilitated metastasis could enable researchers to find a way to prevent a cancer from metastasizing or treat it if it had already spread. Neman, who has specialized in neurological surgery, physiology and neuroscience, added that they had already began studies that were focused on learning why some parts of the brain weren’t receptive to specific cancer cells.

This, he said, would assist in the development of better targeted therapies for cancer patients. In addition to this, he hypothesizes that cancer cells may possess the ability to adapt to certain parts of the brain, which enables them to colonize and multiply. The research was reported in the “Journal of Neurosurgery.”

This new discovery about the patterns through which brain tumors spreads adds a new dimension to the possible ways of coming up with more effective treatments, and companies such as CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) studying how to develop novel remedies could also have their own insights informing their research.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/CNSP

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