On a different issue, a few years ago, the medical director of Medicare told me that we will never get what we want from Medicare because the brain tumor community is not organized enough to apply pressure. We have to show them that is no longer true. We finally have a big step forward in the treatment of brain tumors and Medicare doesn't want to pay for it. This is the most important advocacy issue we face now. Trying to get additional funding for research is futile if we lose this battle because any new treatments will be expensive and if Medicare doesn't pay we won't have access anyway.
This is the results of a relatively small randomized study comparing Temodar to Temodar plus Lomustine for Newly Diagnosed GBM with MGMT methylation. Results look very good - a significant increase in overall survival - about 17 months. However, I would like to see this study repeated with a larger number of patients, and possibly include Optune use.
One problem I have is that the treatment was limited to about 6 months of therapy. Looking at the graphs, there is really no difference between the groups for the first 2 years. Only 2 patients at the end of the trial make the plots diverge. These 2 patients may have had different treatments after finishing the trial treatments or may just have been lucky.
