DOPE INGREDIENT MAY FIGHT CANCER

NEW YORK (AP) - Marijuana-like drugs eradicated some brain cancers in rats
and helped other animals live longer, according to a study published in the
March issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

The study dealt with gliomas, the most common category of cancer arising in
the brain. Gliomas are highly lethal in people despite treatment with
drugs, surgery and radiation.

Scientists at the Complutense and Autonoma universities in Madrid, Spain,
injected glioma cells into the brains of rats to produce tumors. Untreated
rats died within 18 days.

Other rats were treated with drug infusions for seven days through a tube
leading to the tumor. Fifteen rats got infusions of THC, the main active
component in marijuana. Tumors disappeared in three animals, and nine other
rats outlived the untreated ones, surviving up to 35 days.

When researchers used a different but similar drug, five of 15 rats became
tumor-free and four others outlived untreated animals, the researchers said.

But Dr. Philip Gutin, chief of neurosurgery at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center in New York, said other experimental therapies work better in
rats. And the paper doesn't demonstrate that the effect came from the drugs
rather than simply the infusion of liquid into the brain, he said.

Dr. Rolf Barth, who studies brain tumors at Ohio State University, called
the work interesting. But he said the type of glioma cells used to create
the tumors does not provide a very good mimic of the human disease.