Mustafa Khasraw, MD, deputy director of the Duke Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Immunotherapy, is at the forefront of a promising clinical trial aimed at improving outcomes for patients with glioblastoma.

Therapies that unleash the immune system to fight tumors have greatly extended the lives of people with many types of cancer. But there are reports that patients with melanoma and lung cancer whose disease has spread to the brain may experience serious inflammatory reactions after receiving immunotherapy drugs concurrently with radiation. In a study appearing April 9 in JAMA Network Open, researchers at the Duke Center for Brain and Spine Metastasis report a nearly two-fold increase in the risk of symptomatic brain inflammation, termed radiation necrosis, among patients with brain metastases receiving the immunotherapies within four weeks of a form of targeted radiation therapy called radiosurgery.

A newly defined parameter may help explain why certain immunotherapies for brain tumors fail and therefore offer new opportunities to curb tumor progression, according to research led by Peter Fecci, MD, PhD, director of the Duke Center for Brain and Spine Metastasis.

Matthew Waitkus, PhD, a member of the Duke Neurosurgery faculty and a researcher in the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke, has been awarded a Research Scholar Grant from the American Cancer Society.

This study aimed to identify knowledge gaps and misconceptions about PC among patients with primary brain tumors (PBTs), their caregivers, and their medical providers.

We are doing this study to find out how safe and effective an experimental drug called MVR-C5252 (the study drug) is for people with advanced brain cancer. Click to read the full Q&A.

Duke brain tumor researchers are part of earliest collaborations that led to the development of the drug, shown to more than double progression-free survival.

Research led by Dorothy Sipkins, MD, PhD, has identified a previously unknown shortcut that some #breastcancer cells use to metastasize to the leptomeninges — the thin membranes that protect the brain — as well as clues that suggest how to block this path.

Simon Gregory, PhD, has been named the Margaret Harris and David Silverman Distinguished Professor of Neurosurgery at Duke University.

This study investigates the link between a mother’s use of substances during pregnancy and specific types of childhood cancers.