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Here is another press release on the same vaccine trial I just mentioned... but it gives more details about the vaccine.
This is our most important issue today. Medicare doesn't want to pay for an FDA approved brain cancer treatment that is the standard of care. Please forward the attached message to all of your friends!
This is one of the most promising trials in a long time for recurrent GBM. I have high expectations for it. Should open soon.
Our friends at the Chris Elliott Fund opened a new patient support service center! Good luck to them! And please try it!
This is one of my favorite projects. We gave a grant 10 years ago to one of the components of this treatment and now after all of that hard work, it looks like things are coming together. This is not yet ready for humans but our grant will definitely speed up the process by years!
I thank everyone for their generous donations which made it possible for us to fund innovative research like this! Much of the funding came from our new memorial funds section of our website. (Go to virtualtrials.com and click on DONATIONS then Memorials.). There are too many to mention them all but the largest donations came from the Stephen Henry Gomory memorial fund, the Donald Klein memorial fund, and the Nadine Sfeir memorial fund. We also had a great response to our end of the year mailing to our loyal members, and we also used the proceeds from our National Walk To End Brain Tumors and the NY Yankees fundraisers.
This one is for skin cancer only, but the technology was invented to help surgeons see where brain tumors are - to tell the difference between normal and cacnerous. We are trying to help raise the money needed to get a brain tumor trial going - hopefully pediatric brain tumor! That is where it is needed most.
Interesting combination - blocking both PI3K and Shh.. They do not say which drugs are involved or the name of the trial. There was an oral SHH inhibitor approved recently - Erivedge. And there is alot of excitement over the drug BKM120 which is still experimental. Will let you know when I find out which trial this is.
We are in the process of updating and adding articles to the website. If you have any suggestions for topics or how to better organize them, let me know!
Pretty good news on a vaccine trial.... there was no control group but it beat historical controls. Survival (I assume after recurrence) was 11 months for the vaccine, compared to 3 to 9 months for historical controls.
From our friends at the IBTA. This newsletter includes the highlights from the recent Society of Neuro-oncology meeting. That article is a must read.
Medicare has created 2new billing codes for the Novocure system... this is a major step towards getting this new brain tumor treatment covered by more insurances.
15 abstracts were presented at this meeting, most from researchers not connected to the company that makes the device. That is a great sign that this new treatment modality is becommoing accepted by the mainstream brain tumor community. Although the system has been approved by the FDA in2011 to treat recurrent GBMs, and is listed as the standard of care in the NCCN guidelines for treatment of recurrent glioblastoma,some treatment centers have been slow to use the device. Now over 110 centers in the USA use it!
I was hoping there would be more of a difference, like the phase 1 trial showed (that trial showed a 50% 5 year survival). However, there were no side effects, and it is a simple shot in the arm, and it did increase progression free survival by 2 or 3 months. We do not have all of the details yet so there may be some subgroups that did benefit a lot.
Excellent work.. Identifying the pathways involved is the first step toward the cure.
THis was another research project that was funded by the Musella Foundation!
(Disclaimer: Tocagen is a small sponsor of the Musella Foundation, and the Musella Foundation funded part of this trial)
I was at the SNO meeting where these results were presented. They showed how every patient (there were 60 patients) who ever took this treatment is doing. Since this was the first time this treatment was used in people, they had to start off with very low doses of the virus, then as they saw it was safe, they moved on to higher and higher dosages. They have not had safety problems so far. The trial was only designed to see if the treatment was safe and to find the right dosage level, so they plan to study efficacy in future studies. However, they showed evidence of antitumor activity and looking at the chart of how patients are doing, some of the patients are alive long past where we would expect them to survive historically.
They showed me the small group of patients that the Musella Foundation funded - (Oligodendrogliomas and anaplastic astrocytoma) and luckily most (about 75%) of these patients are still alive and doing well.
Bottom line, I think this is a worthwhile trial to consider for people with recurrent high grade gliomas .
Aside from the exciting news about how the ongoing Tocagen trials are going, there was a poster presentation describing a new clinical trial that injects the virus intravenously. The trial is actually a hybrid - they inject half of the dose IV, then 11 days later, do a surgery to remove whatever tumor is remaining, and inject the rest of the dose. This is exciting because they do the surgery in part to make sure the virus got to all of the tumor cells. IF that is true, then future trials may be completely IV, and may allow diffuse tumors on both sides of the brain. Henry Ford Health System in Detroit is currently enrolling patients for this study. Henry Ford Health System in Detroit is currently enrolling patients for this study.
Interesting new approach.
This is another very interesting combination. Of course we have seen many things in the past work on mice then not in people, but this is one of those combinations that make a lot of sense. This one should get into human trials quickly, and if it does work we may have quick access to it.
Another tool in the toolbox in the fight against cancer.
Whole brain radiation is not usually used for GBMs now (unless they already spread throughout the brain), but has been the standard for cancers that spread to the brain. This article suggests that delaying radiation may lead to less loss of cognitive functioning. They used Gliadel wafer or stereotactic radiosurgery to slow down the recurrences.
