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Great news! This is one of my favorite experimental treatments. Fast track designation will speed up the approval process!
This project will hopefully allow the researcher to apply for a large NIH grant to get the clinical trial going!
I thank all of our end of year donors for making this possible.
We have 3 other worthy projects waiting for funding. If you would like to help fund them, make a donation at: Virtualtrials.com
As a reminder, the tax laws have changed significantly for next year. For most people, it is going to be better to donate in 2017 than 2018. Ask your accountant! As always, it is best to donate appreciated stocks than to donate cash. This works best for stock that you own for over a year. Click HERE for details on why it is better. We make it simple to donate stock. Just call us at 888-295-4740 and we will explain how to do it.
If you could use help - do not be shy about asking. These treatments can get expensive. If you think you need it, apply as soon as possible as the program is going to close quickly. Send by fax. IF you do not have fax, email it to us, but call us on the phone 888-295-4740 after you email it, and tell us you sent it. We will look for it and fax it for you.
Our medical editor, Stephen Western, put together what we feel are the most important stories from the SNO meeting!
There are a few reports of long term survivors with no recurrence after a few years - with Optune, Toca 511, and a new vaccine. If it were possible to combine these things, we may have something that is effective for the majority of patients! We are working on that - stay tuned!
This is the final report of the Optune trial for newly diagnosed GBM. It should set the new standard of care for GBM to include Optune.
This article looks at the failure of the Nivolumab trial and tries to show why it failed and how we can overcome those failures. This trial used Nivolumab as a monotherapy at the time of first recurrence and it failed to show an improvement in overall survival. The authors say that it may work better in combination with some other treatments that boost the immune system, such as radiation, vaccines or other immunotherpaies. It also may work better with newly diagnosed instead of recurrent patients.
This is great news. I was worried that they would remove the approval based on the study mentioned. The study showed "no significant increase in overall survival". That study did not take into account how Avastin is used in the real world. In the real world it is used in combination with many other things and is a very useful drug. Our virtual trial is tracking the combinations. One that looks exceptionally good (although only 4 patients used the combination) is Avastin plus Optune. 2 of the 4 patients died, but they survived an average of 30 months. The other 2 are alive - one for 22 months so far and the other an amazing over 8 years.
This is a very exciting new treatment for one of the worst diseases that could happen to kids.
This correction just came out. In this article about Avastin for GBMs from 2008, they used the wrong units for the dosage calculation. The correct units are mg per kilogram, not the mg per square meter of body surface area that they originally reported. The difference is huge. For a typical 200 pound 6' tall patient, at 5mg per square meter, the incorrect dose would be about 10mg of Avastin. Using the correct formula, 5mg per kg, it would be about 450 mg. Note that the correct dose of Avastin is not really known. Some use 5mg per kg, some 10mg per kg and some higher doses.
This was only in mice, but it shows that using morphine might make temodar work better.
This research found a new target for these devastating pediatric brain tumors - and there are drugs available that can hit these targets so it may offer hope for these patients. This project was funded by the Musella Foundation. We are saving up for the next step in this research.
This type of research is the key to finding the cure. All of the treatments that have failed phase 2 and 3 trials should be retested to try to figure out why there was enough success in the phase 1 trial to justify the phase 2, then having the subsequent trial fail. Most likely there is a subtype of tumor that IS sensitive to the treatment.
Dr. Peereboom talks about the highlights from SNO
The package inserts warns against using Optune if you have an implanted defibrillator or a programmable shunt. However, they looked at patients in the trials who had these devices implanted and used Optune anyway, and found that there were no safety problems.
The cool thing is that all of the responders still do not have a recurrence. Way too early to be talking about a cure - and it is a small group of patients, but ALL of the IDH1 mutant high grade glioma patients had a complete response, which has lasted 2-4 years so far.
This is a press release about the research I mentioned in a previous news blast article!
After the data that they announced at the last SNO meeting (https://virtualtrials.com/newsarticle.cfm?item=6390), it would be criminal for them to not pay for it.
Dr. Wen talks about the latest clinical trials!
Sounds exactly like what we are proposing, but without the virtual trial concept! We need to get them to consider the virtual trial! See https://virtualtrials.com/fda2017.cfm
