In fact, Vaneman, a retired professor of Shakespeare and medieval literature, had brain cancer: a glioblastoma or GBM, the most common type of brain tumor.
The FDA based its approval of the NovoTTF 100A System on results from a single international clinical study in 237 patients with recurrent GBM or with GBM that hadn't responded to traditional therapy.
"This is the most spectacular burst ever seen at high energy, " said Dr Valerie Connaughton, a scientist from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) instrument team.