Today's Globe: growing arsenal for brain cancer, patient stories, physicians' suit over tiering, Cambridge lab complex, breast cancer hospital stays, quitting smoking

Until a few years ago, patients stricken with cancerous brain tumors had precious few treatment options. There was surgery and radiation and not much else. But today, as Senator Edward M. Kennedy (left) and his doctors plot his course of care for a malignant glioma, they confront a richer palette of possibilities - due in no small part to Kennedy's championing of the war on cancer since its dawn in 1971.

The type and size of Kennedy's tumor have not been made public, nor has his course of treatment. But news of the legendary lawmaker's diagnosis sparked national headlines and an outpouring of sympathy from cancer survivors and those still in the throes of treatment (including Jessica McComisky, with daughter Talia).

The Massachusetts Medical Society yesterday sought to derail a two-year-old plan under which physicians are ranked for cost and quality measures by health plans associated with the Group Insurance Commission, the agency that oversees health insurance for thousands of public employees at state and local levels. In a lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court, the society - which represents the state's doctors - alleges the commission's plan hurts physicians and patients.

A California real estate company wants to build a $1 billion laboratory complex in Cambridge over the next decade to accommodate growing life sciences companies starved for space.

A congressional panel yesterday said it has bipartisan support for a bill requiring health insurers to pay for a minimum 48-hour hospital stay after breast cancer treatment, to combat what critics call "drive-through" surgeries.

Smokers tend to quit in groups, a Harvard study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds, which means smoking cessation programs should work best if they focus on groups instead of individuals.