First came the migraines. Then Becca Valle started feeling sick — so sick she thought she might have both migraines and food poisoning.

After a trip to the local emergency room and weeks of testing and probing, she learned she had neither. She had a mass in her brain caused by a particularly aggressive and lethal type of cancer.

“I googled glioblastoma and totally lost it,” Valle said.

Most of the 15,000 people diagnosed every year with this malignant tumor die within 15 months — and that’s after doctors throw the usual treatments at it: surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. The treatments almost never get rid of all of the cancer cells, some of which usually turn back into tumors, according to the Glioblastoma Foundation.

So Valle, now 42, isn’t just remarkably alive four years after her diagnosis. She also has no signs of cancer.

She and her medical team credit the addition of an experimental procedure — focused ultrasound — that she underwent in 2021 at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Doctors can also now say that they have some proof it works more broadly.

A study just published in the journal The Lancet Oncology found that patients who added focused ultrasound to their treatment lived about 40% longer than those undergoing only the standard care.

“The disease could become a chronic condition, and not a death sentence,” said Dr. Graeme Woodworth, chair of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who led the study published late last month.

He noted that while other promising studies are underway, there have been no new treatments approved in years for glioblastomas.

There were close to three dozen patients in the U.S. and Canada who participated in his study, and many were alive at the end last year, said Woodworth, who is also head of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

The key change, he said, is getting chemotherapy, or any other specialized treatment, directly into the brain. Normally, a protective coating called the blood-brain barrier works to keep out toxins. It also keeps out most treatments.

The focused ultrasound process opens the barrier temporarily. That allows the drugs to pass through and attack all of the still-dangerous cancer cells left over after chemotherapy and radiation.

Woodworth said the idea is to eventually use focused ultrasound to more effectively treat the cancer, keep tabs on any signs of regrowth and, if needed, retreat the patients.

Focused ultrasound works by injecting a bubbling agent through patients’ arms and activating it with high-frequency sound waves at a spot outside their brains. There, the tiny bubbles cause the barrier on the brain to loosen just long enough for patients to take a normal dose of chemotherapy or another treatment.

The process is being tested in different ways for 180 diseases, including for cancers in other parts of the body, according to the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, which helps fund research. In some cases, the energy from the focused ultrasound alone can degrade tissue, such as a uterine fibroid.

An added benefit is there aren’t extra incisions or harm to surrounding tissue because treatments are so targeted, according to the foundation and Woodworth.

Focused ultrasound is already approved to treat fibroids, Parkinson’s disease and a handful of other disorders.

There’s no timetable for regulatory approvals and the treatment remains only available as part of a study. But Woodworth and other researchers around the country continue to study and refine the process. They already have reduced how much they have to brace patients inside the MRI machine to ensure the bubbles open the right spot outside the brain.

Researchers also hope the process can eventually be done in minutes, rather than a long day in the hospital.

Woodworth and others caution they are still early in their effort to make focused ultrasound a standard glioblastoma treatment.

Dr. Neal Kassell, chairman of the foundation, said in a statement that he was encouraged but cautioned that the findings “come from a small cohort, so confirmation in a larger study is crucial.”

Despite her progress, Valle is still scanned regularly for any signs of the cancer’s recurrence.

But the experimental treatment has already provided her a new lifeline, giving her the chance to move from Maryland to New York, start a new job as a marketing executive and return to recreational travel. Once a marathon runner, she has returned to her active life of hiking, skiing and running.

“People still ask me, ‘How’s your health?’

Her reply? “I consider myself cancer-free.”