“Glioblastoma is among the most aggressive and fatal cancers known to medicine. It’s the disease that claimed the life of Canadian icon Gord Downie and is diagnosed in about 1,000 Canadians every year.

This cancer rarely gives patients more than a few months to live.

But a new study, with nearly half of the patients in Canada, may have started to shift that reality.

Published in The Lancet Oncology, the trial followed 34 people with glioblastoma, including 14 patients treated at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

It found that a novel technique using microscopic bubbles, triggered by focused ultrasound to temporarily open the brain’s protective barrier, allowed chemotherapy to penetrate tumour regions effectively.

Patients lived nearly 40 per cent longer — that’s a median survival of more than 31 months, compared to about 19 months in a group treated with standard therapy.”

From CTV News.