Physician Referral Online

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of Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Physician Referral Online
Using your own criteria, you can request information from a database of more than 1,000 area physicians who have registered to participate.

Request an appointment
We would be happy to assist you in scheduling an appointment with a member of the hospital's medical staff. Use the link above or call:

203-688-2000
or toll free
1-888-700-6543
to talk with a referral coordinator.

Yale-New Haven was recognized this year by U.S. News & World Report for its cancer services.

Early study holds promise for novel treatment in brain cancer

While this is only an early study (Phase I) with a very small number of patients, I think it holds great promise in the treatment of brain cancer. The whole concept of immunomodulatory therapy to stimulate the body’s natural defenses is an interesting research path.

Vaccination therapy may in the future turn out to be another tool to treat brain cancer, one of the most aggressive types of cancer. It's important to understand that a Phase I study sets out to determine only if a treatment is feasible and safe. It is too early to know if this form of therapy will ever be widely used to treat glioblastoma.

It supports the hypothesis, however, that a person's immune system can be modulated in order to fight brain cancer, which is very important news for cancer doctors.

Brain cancer flies under the body's radar
It's always best when the body's immune system recognizes cancer cells. However, brain cancer cells often fly under the radar. The body fails to recognize them. We don't understand why. We have a very efficient immune system, but for some reason in patients who develop cancer, it doesn't effectively screen out cancerous cells, especially in the brain.

We think that cancer cells don't express the types of characteristics that are picked up by the immune system. We also know that some cancer cells are better at attracting immune cells; studying the mechanisms of immune response in those may help explain why this is not the case in brain cancer.

Vaccine works like any immunization
In very simple terms, vaccine therapy for cancer treatment works on the same concept as immunizations for chicken pox, whooping cough and other bacterial and viral diseases. The vaccine helps to modify the immune system to recognize brain cancer and to stop it.

In the study, brain tumor cells were exposed to healthy immune cells in a petri dish in the laboratory. This exposure helped “train” the immune cells to better “learn” to recognize the cancer cells.

Vaccine therapy years away
Although the study is far from making the vaccine available soon, it does teach us several things. First, we know that vaccine therapy can be done. Patients tolerate it well with few side effects. We also know that it is complex, requires individual tailoring to each patient and can only be done in very specialized research centers.

I think that this type of therapy should be studied on a larger scale because results are very promising.

Studies underway
At the Yale Brain Tumor Center, studies are underway that make use of other mechanisms of the body's immune system. One study is evaluating the use of a genetically engineered protein to fight brain cancer.

In a very simple explanation, here is what happens: a protein called interleukin 13 is combined with a bacterial toxin. When administered into brain tissue surrounding the tumor through catheters placed at the time of surgery, the molecule selectively targets brain cancer cells. The protein is attracted to a cancer cell and once it is received, it releases the bacterial toxin that kills the cancer cell.

Early results (Phase I) proved that the treatment is feasible and is well tolerated. A larger trial (Phase III) comparing the new treatment with an established one is now underway. Results are promising and should let patients know that tomorrow holds more hope for better treatment.

Advice for brain cancer patients
My advice to patients suffering from brain cancer, and their families, is to understand the treatment offered to them as best as they can and research their options.

First, ask what standard or investigational treatment your doctor or hospital may have available. Find out what novel treatments may be in use and what medical centers within your reach offer them. Many promising new treatment approaches are underway in clinical trials all over the world. Much information on brain tumor treatment and research is available on the Web.

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Dr. Baehring is an attending physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital and assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Yale School of Medicine. He is part of the team at the Yale Brain Tumor Center and is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.