Meg's treatment schedule

• Today (12/28/09) Meg had a plastic-mesh mask made to hold her head still during radiation therapy. She'll be treated at the Swedish Cancer Institute, which uses Image Guided Radiation Therapy to precisely aim radiation at tumors.
• 12/28/09: Met with neuro-oncologist John Henson to talk about treatment. Andrew had spent hours looking at papers and government publications and had lots of questions, all of which Dr. Henson managed to answer.
• 12/28/09 Met with research nurse to (tentatively) sign up for a clinical trial, which adds Avastin (which inhibits the growth of new blood vessels) to the standard treatment of radiation therapy and chemotherapy with Temodar. 
• We will decide on the course of treatment after consulting on Wednesday with Marc Chamberlain, a neuro-oncologist at the University Hospital who was recommended to us by multiple colleagues. We'll also check in with her surgeon again before making a final decision.
  
  
• January 5, 2010: Meg starts a 6 week course of daily Temodar chemotherapy and 5 day a week radiation treatments. Side-effects of chemotherapy are expected to be mild, but she's expected to get rather tired towards the end of the radiation therapy. The clinical trial will, if she takes part in it, start half-way through the 6-week radiation period.
• All the staff we meet continue to be efficient, dedicated and open!

(There's more! Click on "read more"to see the rest)

The clinical trail tests whether Avastin, which is known to be very effective in treating recurrences of glioblastoma, will be even more effective if given upfront with the radiation and Temovar. It's a blind study, so 50% of the patients will get saline infusions every 2 weeks.

A friend noted:

A couple of days ago, I learned that another friend has had good luck with avastin for a similar brain tumor.  His tumor has nearly disappeared from his scans after a year of treatment.  I know nothing about avastin, but it sounds like a wonderful thing for at least a few people.

Avastin is a "humanized" monoclonal antibody. Monoclonal antibodies are made by mouse cells, and so would themselves be attacked by the human immune system, if they had not been modified (humanized) to make them non-reactive. The humanization technique was invented by Meg's former mentor, Jeff Foote. Meg solved the first protein structure of a humanized antibody while she was in Jeff's lab. What goes around, comes around.

Another interesting coincidence: the system that the surgeon used to allow her to operate on Meg's brain, using MRI image information, was invented by Andrew's bosses brother and nephew!