Sponsored by
This is a new genet therapy trial for newly diagnosed gbm
This opens another option for people about to have a brain tumor surgery. This article describes how they give a cocktail of drugs a few days before the surgery then when they do the surgery they can measure if the drugs got into the tumor and if they have shown efficacy. If yes, they continue with that cocktail, if not, they switch to something else. This prevents you from wasting time with an ineffective cocktail. This team is also open to experimenting with different cocktails based on prior lab results. The article says that this team treats more glioblastomas than any other center in the country!
This is one of the more exciting treatments in the pipeline, but unfortunately this trial did not show good results for most of the patients. 2 patients out of 18 did well. There are many variations of CAR-T cells, using many different targets. This doesn't mean all Car-t cell trials won't work.
I love articles like this. Diffuse midlines gliomas are among the worst of the worst brain tumors. Of course you can not make decisions based on a handful of case reports but they do give some hope where there really wasn't much before. Your donations have helped fund this - we gave 3 grants to help get this developed and it is in clinical trials, and there is a compassionate use program open. Ask your doctors about this if you have the H3K27M mutation (sometimes reported as H3F3A), or a brainstem tumor. It is most common in younger people with tumors near the midline of the brain. We will be dedicating part of the proceeds from our National Walk To End Brain Tumors 5k events to this project!
Excellent review of glioblastomas and how to treat them.
Gleolan is FDA approved - it helps the neurosurgeon know what is tumor and what is not while operating. Good work to my friend Dr Schulder!
I was really hoping this trial would turn out well but it failed to meet it's endpoints. This is a different way of using vaccines - it makes a lot of sense. However, they chose to try it on recurrent glioblastomas, which might have been too late.
This looks good for recurrent GBM. It is too small of a study to tell for sure but the survivals compare very well to historical survivals. We need to follow all patients who use Optune to see which combinations are the best, and this opens the door for more research on using Optune for recurrent GBM.
Stay tuned - I will send out another news blast about this issue when the proposed rule is released!
Thanks to those who watched the video on Youtube. I think that helped. Nobody wants to be viewed as advocating for a 2 tiered health system in the USA where 95% of private insurances pay for Optune but our elderly and disabled won't be able to get it. Things like that can happen behind closed doors but not when everything is out in the open. Medicare did the right thing with this process. This was the first ever public CAC meeting for a device - they used to do these things behind closed doors.
We are having a series of 5k fundraisers - visit the Walktoendbraintumors.org website to see Where and When.
I need everyone to watch this video. Ask your friends to watch it as well - all on separate devices so each person gets counted.
You will probably see a lot of negative things being said about Optune. Take that with a grain of salt. The committee is trying to find an excuse not to pay for it and I doubt if any of the committee members have much experience with using Optune. We will point out the good things in our follow up letters!
This is about a new drug delivery system for Parkinson's disease but I see no reason it can't be used for brain tumors. It allows you to do something like convection enhanced delivery but over a long period of time.
This may explain why using Tamoxifen for glioblastomas helped some patients. An old research paper (see https://virtualtrials.com/Tam1.cfm) from 1996 showed pretty good results using high dose tamoxifen for recurrent glioblastomas.
I had a relative who did well with high dose tamoxifen for over 5 years with her GBM, but it's use fell out of favor when Temodar arrived on the scene. Maybe it is time to go back and test this again in new combinations!
This shows what we already assumed: getting treated in a academic center with a high volume of brain tumor patients will result in a better outcome.
From our friends at Tocagen! Sounds like an exciting meeting!
