F.Y.I.

Here is some of the information I was able to scan on to the blog. More MRI's will follow as they become available.



The above MRI shows Bryon's head in August 2008 while under growing radiation therapy in preparation to take the oral chemotherapy drug called Temodar. It was the easiest form of chemo and the one with the least amount of side effects, but also showed very ineffective on treating the tumor. Bryon would have surgery to remove the tumor in January 2009 after it re-grew to a size just larger than a quarter. The tumor has been outlined in black. You are viewing his head from the back, and you can see how far up the tumor had to grow to reach his skull.

This is the previous MRI that the drug company was using as a base to compare how much the tumor would change every eight weeks. This was the first time the tumor reacted to the MPC (the acronym for the trial drug) and had showed significant reduction in size. Shape of the tumor is never consistent, but general location has stayed the same.

What is a glioblastoma anyway?

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common and most aggressive type of primary brain tumor in humans, involving glial cells and accounting for 52% of all parenchymal brain tumor cases and 20% of all intracranial tumors. Despite being the most prevalent form of primary brain tumor, GBMs occur in only 2–3 cases per 100,000 people in Europe and North America. According to the WHO classification of the tumors of the central nervous system‎, the standard name for this brain tumor is "glioblastoma"; it presents two variants: giant cell glioblastoma and gliosarcoma. Glioblastomas are also an important brain tumor of the canine, and research is ongoing to use this as a model for developing treatments in humans.^[1] Treatment can involve chemotherapy, radiation radiosurgery, corticosteroids, antiangiogenic therapy, and surgery. ^[2]

Glioblastoma has a very poor prognosis, despite multimodality treatment consisting of open craniotomy with surgical resection of as much of the tumor as possible, followed by concurrent or sequential chemoradiotherapy, antiangiogenic therapy with bevacizumab, gamma knife radiosurgery, and symptomatic care with corticosteroids. Other than the brainstem gliomas, it has the worst prognosis of any CNS malignancy