WebMD (acquired by Healtheon)

Jun 25, 2017

By Alexandria McIntire WebMD Health News The FDA this month approved the first fluorescing agent to help neurosurgeons operate on malignant brain tumors. Doctors believe the agent, which “lights up” the brain tumor, can make surgery safer and more effective. The new drug Gleolan (aminolevulinic acid hydrochloride), has been used in Europe since 2007. Costas Hadjipanayis, MD, a surgical neuro-oncologist at Mount Sinai Beth Israel and Director of Neurosurgical Oncology for the Mount Sinai Health System, helped bring the technology to the United States. Hadjipanayis says that the cost has not been set yet. WebMD talked to Hadjipanayis to learn more. WebMD: How does this technology work? Hadjipanayis: It’s an amazing agent that’s orally administered. We wait several hours after we give it to our patient and it gets into the tumor. Then it’s metabolized into a fluorescent form. So that form is what we detect in the operating room…The tumor lights up red, and we’ve had a lot of studies with that showing that that red tissue correlates with malignant tissue. WebMD: So what makes this unique to other contrasting agents? Hadjipanayis: Well this unique, because it is the first agent in the operating room that allows us to detect brain tumors, ever. The contrast that we give for MRI scans – that’s not in the operating room, that’s something we do outside of the operating room that shows on the MRI scan. We’re actually seeing tumor tissue in real time in the operating room. It actually guides our surgery and allows me or another neurosurgeon to delineate the tumor tissue from the surrounding brain, so we can more safely perform surgery, and we can more safely remove as much of the tumor as possible. WebMD: What are the side effects of this technology? Is there a reason why some people should not take this? Hadjipanayis: One of the side affects you can have is photosensitivity after we give the drug, but that is only if you go out into the bright sunlight or bright light and we typically don’t have patients do that right after surgery; it lasts about 24 hours. It’s metabolized by the liver, so if anyone has significant liver dysfunction then we don’t recommend those patients get it. And then certainly any women who are pregnant, we don’t know the side effects for the fetus, so we would not recommend and it would be contraindicated for a pregnant woman to get Gleolan.