"That is our big hope at the present time," says Dr. Burn. "Because we are using already-approved drugs, should our trial be successful, physicians could immediately start using those drugs to treat patients, whereas it can take 15 years and $1 billion to go through the entire drug development process. We should be in position to give the whole field a jump-start."
The first trial is modest, including about 56 patients who will be given a combination of those two drugs or a placebo for one year. These young patients are coming into the trial newly diagnosed and fresh out of the doctor's office. This is what Krystopolski refers to as research that goes "from bench to bedside" and can be seen in real patient results. These children have most likely already lost 90 percent of their beta cells, but are still at an optimal stage for beta cell regeneration. Burn says that it may be more difficult for adults to regenerate the cells or moderate the immune system with the same success. The results of the first trial will be analyzed and evaluated and should be presented by the end of the second year.
Guiding pediatric neurosurgery At the Montreal Children's Hospital at the McGill University Health Center in Canada, some new technology is taking this 105-year-old children's hospital to new heights. The institution has already built a name with its work in genetic diseases, cardiology and pediatric surgery, but it is now carving out a space for image-guided pediatric neurosurgery.
Dr. Jean-Pierre Farmer is chief of the newly created Department of Pediatric Surgery at the hospital and has overseen the recent overhaul of the hospital's OR to make room for some very advanced technology: a new Philips Achieva 3.0T X-series MRI system combined with BrainLAB's BrainSUITE iMRI intraoperative platform. With the high-field MRI scanner, digital intraoperative navigation system and custom OR components, neurosurgeons at Montreal Children's are able to conduct image-guided neurosurgery with cutting-edge precision. The new MR/OR is already in operation and is being used predominately for brain tumor resection and surgical treatment for epilepsy.
Since the early 1990s, neurosurgeons have been performing various forms of image-guided neurosurgery. Usually brain scans are taken the night before or sometime prior to surgery and those scans are used to map out the surgical plan, but "occasional retraction and brain shifts" can happen during the operation, requiring reevaluation.
