Virginia researchers are loading tiny, hollow carbon balls with metals and medicine they say could improve the ability to detect and destroy brain-cancer cells.

Brain cancers are rare but often deadly. Cancerous cells often stray from the main tumor, making them difficult to find. They're troublesome to treat, in part because many medicines can't get from the bloodstream into the brain, and tricky to remove.

Each year, about 18,400 people learn they have brain cancer, and 12,690 patients die of the disease. Less than 10 percent survive longer than five years despite aggressive surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

(www.timesdispatch.com)