Brain metastases (intracranial disease)
Tumour deposits that have travelled to the brain from a cancer elsewhere; ten times more common than cancers that start in the brain. Whether a drug can reach and shrink them is now a key property of new cancer medicines.
Lung cancer, breast cancer (especially HER2-positive and triple-negative), melanoma and kidney cancer account for most cases; 30-50% of driver-positive lung cancer patients develop them. Local treatment is stereotactic radiosurgery or surgery for limited disease and whole-brain radiotherapy for extensive disease. Because the blood-brain barrier excludes many drugs, CNS penetration and intracranial response rates (osimertinib, lorlatinib, tucatinib, T-DXd in DESTINY-Breast12) increasingly determine which drug is chosen, and trials now report intracranial progression-free survival separately.
Pages like this
not linked directly; found by shared links- TermIntrathecal therapy (lumbar puncture, Ommaya reservoir)
Shares Leptomeningeal disease, Prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI), CNS penetration (brain-penetrant drugs).
- TechnologyProphylactic cranial irradiation vs MRI surveillance
Shares Prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI), Whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT).
- IdeaBuild a human model of the barrier that guards the brain fluid
Shares HER2-positive breast cancer, Melanoma, Non-small-cell lung cancer.
- IdeaA standard platform to get drugs into the brain: focused ultrasound plus shuttle-engineered therapeutics
Shares HER2-positive breast cancer, Melanoma, Non-small-cell lung cancer.
- IdeaBrain metastases included by default in every solid-tumour trial
Shares HER2-positive breast cancer, Melanoma, Non-small-cell lung cancer.
- IdeaTreat brain metastases as a disease with its own trials programme
Shares HER2-positive breast cancer, Melanoma, Non-small-cell lung cancer.
- ProductPegulicianine
Shares HER2-positive breast cancer, Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
- PersonSara López-Tarruella
Shares HER2-positive breast cancer, Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).