‘Sci-fi’ cancer therapy fights tumors

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

It sounds like science fiction, but a cap-like device that makes electric fields to fight cancer improved survival for the first time in more than a decade for people with deadly brain tumors, final results of a large study suggest.

Many doctors are skeptical of the therapy, called tumor treating fields, and it’s not a cure. It’s also ultra-expensive – $21,000 a month.

But in the study, more than twice as many patients were alive five years after getting it, plus the usual chemotherapy, than those given just the chemo – 13 percent versus 5 percent.

“It’s out of the box” in terms of how cancer is usually treated, and many doctors don’t understand it or think it can help, said Dr. Roger Stupp, a brain tumor expert at Northwestern University in Chicago.

He led the company-sponsored study while previously at University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland, and gave results Sunday at an American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Washington.

“You cannot argue with them – they’re great results,” and unlikely to be due to a placebo effect, said one independent expert, Dr. Antonio Chiocca, neurosurgery chief at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.