WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Water diffusion monitored by magnetic resonance technology can help determine if brain tumors are responding to treatment, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
Tumor cells block the flow of water, the team at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center said, so as those cells die, water diffusion patterns change and the new MRI technology can track it.
The researchers studied 20 people with malignant brain tumors, and found that changes in the diffusion map showed if chemotherapy or radiation therapy was having any effect on the cancer.
It gave results within 3 weeks -- 10 weeks before traditional MRI techniques of assessing whether therapy is working, the researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Speeding up the process of assessing treatment response can save patients from often-uncomfortable treatments that may be a waste of time, said co-investigator Dr. Brian Ross, a professor of radiology and biological chemistry.
“Do you want to go through seven weeks of treatment only to find two months later that it had no effect?” he said in a statement.
“Using MRI tumor diffusion values to accurately predict the treatment response early on could allow some patients to switch to a more beneficial therapy and avoid the side effects of a prolonged and ineffective treatment,” he added.
Now the team plans to test the technique with breast cancer, and head and neck cancer.
The University of Michigan said it holds a patent on the MRI diffusion technology and has licensed it to Molecular Therapeutics Inc. a privately held Michigan company, to develop into a product hospitals and doctors could use.
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