Next Generation Treatments for Brain Tumors: The Already Realized and the Promising

Having the right tools to offer patients with brain tumors an optimal treatment can greatly preserve their qualities of life. That is why the Brain Tumor Treatment and Research Center at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center is continually in search of new ways to make treatment easier and more efficacious for patients.

What’s New

In late 2017, UMGCCC updated its stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) capabilities through an investment in the Varian Edge™, a linear accelerator specifically designed for SRS. With a high level of synchronization between its optical surface monitoring system, beam-shaping 120-leaf collimator, and dose delivery technologies, it permits frameless SRS and shorter treatment times. It is just one of several advanced radiation oncology technologies – including proton therapy – available at the University of Maryland for treating brain lesions.

What’s on the Horizon

Glioblastoma remains a cancer with few treatment breakthroughs, and the blood-brain barrier poses a challenge to adjuvant chemotherapy, making recurrence a forgone conclusion. The Brain Tumor Treatment and Research Center has been on the forefront of exploring ways to breach the blood brain barrier to eventually deliver systemic therapies, including the use of focused ultrasound and microbubbles to temporarily disrupt the barrier or by encasing agents in nanoparticles small enough to permeate the barrier. 

Our Experience

Some of the University of Maryland’s most accomplished neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists and medical oncologists comprise the multidisciplinary care team of the Brain Tumor Treatment and Research Center.  A relatively high percentage of patients at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center have cancers of the brain and central nervous system, which represented 5.5 percent of all analytic cases in 2016 compared to making up just 1.4 percent of cancers in Maryland from 2010-14.

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Related People

Neurosurgeons

Graeme F. Woodworth, MD

E. Francois Aldrich, MB,CHB

Howard M. Eisenberg, MD

J. Marc Simard, MD, PhD


Radiation Oncologists

Mark Mishra, MD

William F. Regine, MD, FACR, FACRO


Medical Oncologists      

Edward Sausville, MD

Petr Hausner, MD