Cancer Drugs Intended For Adults Help Children With Brain Tumor

St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital has tested two drugs that are currently used on adults with lung, pancreatic, and breast cancers. The study was published in the Cancer Cell journal.

Researchers were able to show that two drugs—pemetrexed and gemcitabine—killed cancer cells from mice and human brain tumors from the medulloblastoma group. About 400 children are affected by medulloblastoma each year in the US and it is considered to be the most common pediatric brain tumor in the country. When the two drugs were used together for treatment, researchers were able to double the life expectancy for mice given the human group 3 medulloblastoma cancer.

Martine Roussel, the author of the study, said that her focus was to find new drugs for young patients that need help. “Our focus was to identify drugs that we could move quickly from the laboratory to the clinic where new chemotherapy options are desperately needed for these high-risk medulloblastoma patients,” said Roussel. “As a basic scientist, it is exciting to be able to translate a laboratory discovery into drugs that are now being used in a clinical trial. The finding provides a strong rationale for combination therapy with pemetrexed and gemcitabine for treatment of group 3 medulloblastoma.”

The study has helped St. Jude to further understand the origins of medulloblastoma as well as explore new treatment options. Researchers ultimately hope that the drugs identified—pemetrexed and gemcitabine—will be used to improve survival and cure rates in children who need treatment for brain cancer. Researchers found little risk associated with the drugs and believe that patients can be treated in conjunction with traditional chemotherapy.