One dose, then surgery: A new way to test brain tumor drugs

One of the nation's most unusual cancer experiments is underway at a Phoenix hospital, aimed at finding new treatments for deadly brain tumors.

With special permission from the Food and Drug Administration and multiple drug companies, doctors at Barrow Neurological Institute are testing drugs so early in development they have never been tried on brain tumors before.

Within a day of getting a single dose of one of these drugs, patients have their tumors removed and checked to see if the medicine had any effect. If it did, they can stay on an experimental drug that otherwise would not be available to them. If it did not, they can try something else, months sooner than they normally would find out that a drug had failed to help.