‘Explorers’ Tracks Neurosurgeon’s Quest

Keith Black is well on his way to becoming a superstar. Handsome, articulate and gifted, this 38-year-old neurosurgeon is a source of hope and confidence for the desperately ill patients who flock to his UCLA offices every day.

He is also a budding media meteor, the subject of a glowing profile in this newspaper and of a “Life & Times” documentary on KCET in 1993. Tonight, he shows up on PBS again as the subject of an installment of “The New Explorers.”

Despite his clear talent, the interest obviously also reflects the subject matter of his research: brain cancer. Tumors of the brain, which kill about 13,000 people every year, are the fastest-growing form of cancer and one of the most feared. First they take away our rational thought, our speech and our movements, then they take our lives.

Brain tumors are particularly difficult to treat. Surgery is often difficult or impossible because the tumors are nestled deep in the interior of our most vital organ, where cutting it out may do more harm then good.

Chemotherapy is typically futile because the fragile brain hides beyond a unique shield called the blood-brain barrier, which prevents toxins and microbes--as well as anti-cancer drugs--from reaching it.

Black is in the forefront of studies with a new drug called RMP-7, which opens this barrier for perhaps 20 minutes so that anti-cancer drugs can be administered directly to the tumor. “The New Explorers” documents the first trials of the drug in humans, in which Black tries to show that it is both safe and effective.

The moving hourlong episode follows three Los Angeles residents--Charles Tom Knowles, Lanita Wagner and Bill Rueger--who have a form of terminal brain cancer called glioma. Black is their last hope because other forms of therapy have failed.

As happens in the real world, these three are not the best responders to the treatment. One has a second, ultimately fatal, tumor. The other two show improvement, but their tumors are still present at the program’s end, a constant threat. Three patients not profiled, however, show a complete remission.

Although Black is the subject of the show, the patients, in his own words, “are the real heroes, some of the bravest people I have ever met.”

* “The New Explorers” airs at 8 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.