Musella Foundation awards another brain tumor research grant! This grant will be combined with grants from many other charities, and it will allow the onc201 program to reopen soon for a few months. After that we will try to fund it on a month to month basis as long as needed (until FDA approval).
Ziopharm Oncology Doses First DIPG Patient in Phase 1/2 Trial of Controlled IL-12 for the Treatment of Pediatric Brain Tumors This is a fascinating gene therapy that can be controlled by an oral drug - the gene therapy is injected into the tumor and it inserts a gene that when activated by the oral drug produces IL-12, which is an immune enhancer. The problem is too much IL-12 causes severe problems so there is a need to be able to control it. They use this oral drug to control it and can turn off the gene therapy if needed simply by stopping the oral drug.
They announced the first use of it in a DIPG patient. They used it on over 175 other patients with other cancers, mostly glioblastoma, with relatively good results. I wish them luck!
This is similiar to an article I posted a few weeks ago, both show that there is a large discrepancy in both clinical trial participation as well as overall survival by race. This is not acceptable. We are working on leveling the playing field by collaborating with the Society of Neuro-oncology as well as a group of research and other organizations to remove barriers to participation in clinical trials.
Our copayment assistance program was a major help in this regard - as a major part of the survival difference is inability to afford treatments - however we ran out of money and our program is closed to new patients. We get calls every day asking for help and right now there are no copay programs open to help people on Temodar. Many patients are sadly going without it.
