CHICAGO (Reuters) – An experimental drug appears to cross a protective barrier in the brain that screens out most chemicals, offering potentially better ways to treat brain tumours, US researchers said yesterday.

The drug, made by privately held Angiochem Inc of Montreal was safe and showed evidence it could shrink tumors in two separate early phase studies totalling more than 100 people with a brain cancer called glioblastoma.

It also worked among people whose cancers had spread or metastasized to the brain, the researchers reported at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago. In both studies, tumours shrank in patients who got a higher dose of the drug, called ANG1005. The drug also showed signs of working in patients whose cancers resisted the chemotherapy drug taxane. "It is encouraging to see that ANG1005 has shown the potential to be effective in metastatic brain cancers and against drug-resistant tumours," Dr. Jan Drappatz of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston said.