Latest News

• Webinar tomorrow!        

  Our next educational webinar is tomorrow, Tuesday, May 12, at 7pm ET with Dr. Nicholas Blondin on "Harnessing Oxygen to Fight Brain Tumors." To join, visit virtualtrials.org/webinar. 

  
  
• The Scientist Designing a Tailored Attack on Glioblastoma        

  Dr. David Nathanson and his team at UCLA are developing an EGFR-targeted drug for glioblastoma (GBM) called KTM-101. About half of GBMs have EGFR alterations, so there have been many attempts to target EGFR, but EGFR-targeted monotherapies have repeatedly disappointed in GBM. Several likely reasons for these failures include poor blood-brain barrier penetration, the heterogeneity and adaptability of GBM tumors, and the ability of tumors to bypass a single blocked pathway or even lose the targeted EGFR alteration over time. We will be watching KTM-101 for further validation in larger studies, and we hope to see EGFR-targeted therapy increasingly explored as one component of rational combination approaches rather than as a stand-alone strategy.

  
  
• NIH-funded study suggests that testosterone suppresses brain tumor growth in males        

  A new study is challenging assumptions about testosterone and glioblastoma (GBM). Some previous preclinical studies suggested testosterone or androgen receptor signaling might promote GBM growth, but many of those studies focused mainly on direct effects of testosterone on tumor cells themselves, often in cell cultures (“cells in a dish”) or simplified tumor models.

  This new study instead used immunocompetent orthotopic mouse models of glioblastoma, meaning the tumors were grown inside the brains of mice with intact immune systems, allowing researchers to study how testosterone affects not just tumor cells, but also the brain’s immune environment, inflammation, and the stress-response system (the HPA axis). Surprisingly, the researchers found that loss of testosterone actually accelerated glioblastoma growth in male mice. Lower androgen levels appeared to increase stress hormones and create a more immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, potentially making it harder for the immune system to respond to the tumor.

  The researchers also analyzed retrospective data from more than 1,300 men with GBM and found that patients receiving supplemental testosterone for unrelated medical reasons had a significantly lower risk of death compared with men not receiving testosterone. While the researchers adjusted for several important clinical factors, including demographics, comorbidities, and extent of surgery, this data is still retrospective and observational, meaning it can show an association but not a definitive causal relationship. The findings should therefore be interpreted with caution, and we hope to see this finding explored further in future prospective trials.