Tocagen Reports Results of Toca 5 Phase 3 Trial in Recurrent Brain Cancer Unfortunately the trial did not meet it's endpoint of median overall survival. I did not really expect it to as the immunotherapies appear to help only a small subset of patients, but when they do - it helps a lot. This leads to a long tail of survivors, but the median does not change. All of the immunotherapies by themselves will probably have this same problem. I think the key is to combine them to the point where most people benefit. I wouldn't write this off until we see the complete results and see if there is a signficant tail.
Bristol-Myers Squibb's Opdivo fails 3rd straight test in tough-to-treat brain cancer As I understand it, the failure was that the median progression free survival did not improve by adding Opdivo to the standard chemoradiation. This is not surprising as most of the immunotherapies seem to work really well on a small subset of the population. We see this in a long tail of survivors. However, even when there is an impressive improvement in long term survival in less than 50% of the patients, the median survival would not be expected to change much. This data has to be looked at closely to try to identify patients who were helped, and then try it in that subset of patient, perhaps in combination with other immunotherapies.
Frankly Speaking About Brain Tumors This is from our good friends at the National Brain Tumor Society, the Cancer Support Community and Gilda's Club. It is an introduction to brain tumors. Everyone should read it.
