Indian scientists and a team of researchers from the University of California's San Francisco Medical Centre have discovered a brand new treatment that could bring a big change in curing brain cancer.
A study conducted by Indian scientist Saritha Krishna and her fellow scientist Shawn Hervey-Jumper revealed that communication between healthy brain cells and cancerous cells could be manipulated to slow down or even halt the growth of a tumor.
This could be done with a commonly-used anti-seizure drug that can effectively reduce the hyperactivity of the tumor cells and even halt their growth.
A study published in the latest issue of the science journal "Nature" argues that this treatment is more beneficial to patients with glioblastoma, considered the most fatal among adult brain cancers.
"These experiments revealed a key role of a protein called 'thrombospondin-1' in this neuronal hyperexcitability and that the drug, gabapentin, a commonly used anti-seizure medication, successfully reduced neuronal hyperexcitability and halted further tumour growth," the study said.