Unusual treatment shows promise for kids with brain tumors

For decades, a deadly type of childhood cancer has eluded science’s best tools. Now doctors have made progress with an unusual treatment: Dripping millions of copies of a virus directly into kids’ brains to infect their tumors and spur an immune system attack.

Although most of them eventually died of their disease, a few are alive and well several years after treatment -- something virtually unheard of in this situation. "This is the first step, a critical step," said the study’s leader, Dr. Gregory Friedman, a childhood cancer specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.