A 62-year-old man sees his killer brain tumor halve in just a few weeks – but HOW did it happen?

A man’s deadly brain tumor has been halved thanks to a new radioactive treatment that experts hope will eradicate the disease.

Doctors at University College London Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) are conducting a clinical trial to treat glioblastoma.

Every year, about 3,200 people are diagnosed with the disease, which is the most common type of brain tumor in adults.

It kills most patients within 18 months, and only 5 percent live beyond five years.

The researchers’ goal is to cure the disease by injecting low levels of radioactivity directly into the tumor to destroy cancer cells.

Paul Reed, a 62-year-old engineer from Luton, was the first patient to take part in the study and his tumor halved in a matter of weeks.

The second patient also just started therapy.

For this procedure, surgeons removed as much of the tumor as possible and then implanted a small medical device called an Ommaya reservoir under the scalp, which connects to the tumor through a small tube.

The nuclear medicine team at UCLH then injects the drug – ATT001, a PARP inhibitor labeled with iodine-123 – directly into the tumor, delivering a small amount of radioactivity.

The drug, which is administered weekly over four to six weeks, is highly effective over short distances, causing fatal damage to tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue.

Mr Reed, who has recurrent glioblastoma, first noticed a very bad headache last December that would not go away.

After being diagnosed two days after Christmas and undergoing surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible, Mr Reed underwent subsequent courses of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

But in July, doctors told him the tumor was growing again.

Mr Reed was then offered a place in the new CITADEL-123 trial at UCLH, having previously agreed to take part in a clinical trial.

He said: “I fully expected the tumor to return due to its aggressive nature. I know the result is not very good and I was happy to learn something else.

“This trial was a lifeline for me because the likelihood of survival according to the data was for me a year or less.

“I am very pleased to be able to take part in this study and I have not experienced any side effects from the injections.

“I may be a little tired, but overall I feel very good.

“None of this scares me. We’ve all been dealt cards and you don’t know which ones you’ll get.

“It will be great if this treatment helps me, but if it doesn’t, it won’t. I’m more than happy – even if it doesn’t benefit me, it could benefit someone else in the future.

“So I have nothing to lose and everything to hope for.”

UCLH consultant medical oncologist Dr Paul Mulholland, who designed the study, said: “We must strive to cure this disease. There are reasons why we can treat this disease because this disease occurs in the same place in the brain.

“Primary brain tumors do not metastasize throughout the body and usually remain in the same place in the brain.

“It doesn’t spread to the rest of the body, so it makes sense to take a targeted approach—directly to the tumor.”