Glioblastoma – Clinical Trials

Transcript

A phase three trial of dendritic cell vaccination completed enrollment and results are pending publication. Two concurrent exploratory studies simultaneously identified clinical benefit with pre-surgical administration of a PD1 inhibitor in recurrent glioblastoma. A modified polio virus has demonstrated some efficacy in a subset of glioblastoma patients, and an innovative viral therapy that activates a chemotherapy within tumor cells is moving into phase three clinical trials. Certain molecular genetic features such as IDH mutation, 1P19Q code deletion and 06MGMT methylation have been discovered to influence patient prognosis, probably by identifying specific subtypes of glioblastoma. More recently, TERT promoter mutations have identified a subset of glioblastomas with a worse prognosis than the rest. Specific histone mutations have identified pediatric subtypes of glioblastoma that were previously unrecognized. A DNA methylation map of all human brain tumors has yielded vast amounts of knowledge, and our understanding of the underpinnings of this disease are advancing at a dizzying pace.