The BBC's Six O'Clock News on the new brain cancer treatment

If the technique proves successful it could bring hope to thousands of people suffering from brain tumours - one of the hardest cancers to treat with very poor survival rates.

The new approach, known as Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT), works by giving patients a non-toxic compound that accumulates in the brain.

A beam of low energy neutrons are then fired at the affected area where they react with the compound to produce localised, cancer killing nuclear particles.

At present, the treatment - which is already showing promising results in patient trials in the US - is only available at nuclear reactor sites aborad where the beams can be safely generated.

But a team of scientists from the Cancer Research Campaign (CRC) and other British experts hope to make it accessible to patients in UK hospitals by improving on this prototype treatment.

Nuclear physicist Professor Derek Beynon and radiotherapist Dr Nick James are currently working in Birmingham to set up the world's first non-reactor site for BNCT where patients will be treated in radiotherapy clinics.

CRC scientist Dr Gerard Morris, at the University of Oxford, is investigating ways of improving the compounds used in the process of BNCT to make treatment more effective.

Better targeting

Beams are generated by nuclear reactors

The new compounds will allow radiation treatment to be targeted more directly to the tumour without causing irreparable damage to the brain.

The technique will mean that higher doses of the anti-cancer treatments can be safely given to patients.

But Dr Morris and his co-workers are now looking for more sophisticated targeting compounds that will ideally only get trapped in tumour cells and not healthy ones.

If both strands of the research are successful, the CRC Clinical Trials Unit at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital is standing by to carry out clinical trials on the new therapy at the start of the year 2000.

Dr Morris said: "Once we have optimised the dose of the compound and our colleagues in Birmingham have perfected the strength of the beam we could be looking at treating patients in one hit rather than with a long course of radiation."

Dr James, of the CRC Institute in Birmingham who will lead the patient trials, said: "This would obviously be far less traumatic than current treatments and with far fewer side effects."

The research is being carried out on malignant gliomas, the most common cancer of the brain, affecting more than 3,500 adults and 250 children each year.

Treatment needed urgently

This type of tumour is resistant to many conventional forms of treatment and new approaches are urgently needed to help boost survival rates.

It is also hoped that the new improved beams being developed in Birmingham will be able to penetrate deep into the brain to attack tumours that conventional treatments cannot reach.

Professor Benyon, of the University of Birmingham's Department of Physics and Astronomy, said: "What we are creating here is a unique type of cancer treatment.

"We are building on technology which has already been tried and tested - but we hope our more sophisticated approach will help make this treatment a reality for brain cancer patients in the UK."