The latest news:

• The McDowell Family Lost A Child To Cancer And Now They Are Creating a Tourist Attraction to Fund Research– So Why Are Some Of The Neighbors So Angry?         Such a sad story.  This is a friend of mine.  His son died of a medulloblastoma and it was devastating. He got into fundraising for pediatric brain tumor research, and has made some large donations to the Musella Foundation and other research organizations.  He had a vison for a huge fundraiser that will make a huge difference. He was going to create a tourist attraction where the profits go to pediatric brain tumor research.  He bought the land, and drew up the plans but then ran into an "environmental" group who did not want it to happen.  So they protest and sued him and shut down the project for now.  With all of the things going wrong with the world right now, these people pick saving the lives of kids with cancer to protest. Unbeleivable. We have so many projects that could get done with the funding.  We are running a major pediatric research project that may have to close down in about 2 weeks as we do not have the funding. I know of a few promising treatments that are just waiting for funding.  
  



• Phase 2a study to evaluate the safety, pharmacokinetics, and clinical activity of the PI3K / mTOR inhibitor GDC-0084 given to glioblastoma (GBM) patients with unmethylated MGMT promotor status           This is an experimental drug - which in this poster from ASCO shows a small trial of 8 patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma, unmethylated MGMT, who did pretty good compared to what we have seen previously with Temozolomide.  This opens a new option for unmethylated MGMT patients, and perhaps eventually in combinations for all gbm (and DIPG and brain met patients.  
  



• Novocure Announces Launch of MyLink™ to Enable Patient-Guided, Remote Download of Optune® Usage Data          This is a great tool. All Optune users should use it to monitor their compliance.   There is a big dose response curve, showing that people who use it over 90% of the time do the best and it is a big effect. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6342854/ for details.  So 90% should be the target and try to go even higher!
  



• Brain Tumor Webinars continue tonight!           Tonight's webinar is another great one. Dr Duma is working on a few treatments that may have a huge impact. We also added another webinar next week - about DIPG / Diffuse midline glioma    
  



• First Patient Treated in Phase 1 Clinical Trial Of Incysus Therapeutics Gamma Delta (?d) T Cell Immunotherapy for Patients With Newly Diagnosed Glioblastoma         This is obviously too early to tell how it works but it is an exciting new concept and I wish them luck.
  



• Factors Affecting Survival in Glioblastoma: A 10-year Single-Center Experience From Saudi Arabia         I posted this to show that even though we sometimes feel that no progress is being made, we need to remember how bad this disease is and appreciate what we do have.  This report shows that the average survival in this hospital in Saudia Arabia (from 2005 to 2015) is only 8 months!  They probably picked 2005 because that is when Temozolomide was approved for Glioblastoma, although it was commonly used here in the USA for Glioblastomas since 1999 when it was approved for anaplastic astrocytoma. (My dad used it for a gbm in 1999!).  They do not mention Optune, even though it was approved in 2011.
  

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