Barrow Neurological Foundation has received two gifts totaling $558,000 from the Ben and Catherine Ivy Foundation to fund groundbreaking brain tumor research at Barrow Neurological Institute at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.
Brain tumor research has been the focus of funding for the Ben and Catherine Ivy Foundation since 2005, the same year Ben Ivy passed away from a glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor.
“During the last months of my husband’s life, his quality of life was severely compromised,” said Catherine Ivy. “My goal for this gift is to fund research that leads to better treatments, less suffering … and longer happier lives for patients diagnosed with brain tumors.”
“I am extraordinarily grateful to have the support of the Ivy Foundation to put brain tumor research on the fast track,” said Nader Sanai, MD, director of the Barrow Brain Tumor Research Center. Dr. Sanai is leading early-phase clinical trials to enable brain tumor patients to receive experimental drugs that could potentially extend their lives beyond the typical prognosis of 12 to 16 months.
Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy are the only known forms of treatment for these fast-growing brain tumors, which almost always recur and unrelentingly result in patient death. Brain tumors are listed as one of the top-10 causes of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Despite decades of research, little progress has been made to defeat them. The Phase 0 study streamlines the drug-approval timeline from an average of five years to six months—saving time, money and, potentially, lives.
“Because of the disappointing track record of traditional brain tumor trials, researchers are trying to think outside of the box and take new approaches to medicine for brain tumor patients,” added Dr. Sanai. “This Phase 0 approach for malignant brain tumors is a game changer in cancer research—the first of its kind in the world.”
Barrow Neurological Institute is home to the highest-volume operative brain tumor program in the United States, making it ideally suited to conduct multiple trials while developing and testing new drugs. Patients participating in the BBTRC clinical trials funded by the Ivy Foundation are administered an experimental drug that has already been FDA approved for treating other types of cancer. Within hours, neurosurgeons remove the patient’s tumor and investigate whether it was penetrated by the drug and, if so, whether the drug is having the desired effect on the tumor. If the drug proves effective, the study moves into Phase II clinical trials for patients.
Over the last decade, the Ivy Foundation has committed more than $60 million to brain tumor research, including several generous gifts to Barrow. In 2014, the foundation awarded a $3-million three-way grant to Barrow, Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Nemucore Medical Innovations Inc. to identify new medications that could be safely transported across the blood-brain barrier to reach targeted tumors. TGen and the Karmanos Cancer Institute have partnered with Barrow and the Ivy Foundation on the current Phase 0 study.
“Our foundation’s long-term, ultimate goal is to cure brain cancer,” added Ivy. “We are dedicated to this effort because funding leads to answers, and answers lead to hope. My hope is that this research will lead us to the day when no one has to go through what Ben did.”
