Cancer treatment for brain tumours could become more effective as a result of a recent study into brain cancer.
The research was carried out by scientists at UCLA and has developed a test which can identify brain tumours and predict which ones will be most likely to respond to the drug Avastin.
A connection was established between high water movement in tumours and the effectiveness of the drug.
Having determined this, scientists can now scan patients and use the image to forecast whether they would benefit from being given Avastin.
Lead author Dr Whitney Pope, assistant professor of radiological sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, commented: "Avastin is an expensive drug, yet only 50 per cent of patients with recurring brain cancers respond to it.
"Until now, there has been no good way to identify these patients in advance. Our work is the first to suggest that we can predict which tumors will respond before the patient ever starts therapy."
Some 13,000 people die every year from brain tumours in the United States.