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This is an exciting new trial for gbm patients either at first recurrence or if there is residual tumor after the initial surgery and radiation. Patients must be EGFRviii positive. This type of treatment has shown fantastic results in other types of cancers and they are now trying it for GBM patients.
Great news from the FDA. Now the problem becomes getting the drug manufacturers to allow us to get the drug and figure out how we are going to pay for them! But at least this removes a huge hurdle!
I frequently get calls from Canadians asking how to get into this trial, and now it is available in Canada! Great news.
Ben is an old friend of mine. He has a lot of updates on our website at virtualtrials.com/williams.cfm
This will soon start trials in brain tumors in dogs soon. hopefully it works and will start up in people!
This is the best presentation I ever saw on immunotherapy for cancer. It doesn't talk much about brain cancer but explains the concepts well. Some very exciting images.
This is always an excellent program - well worth going to!
Great news. That is an excellent sign that things are going well.
This is one of my favorite trials now. It is for people with Glioblastoma multiforme who have the EGFR vIII mutation. It can be done at the time of recurrence or for newly diagnosed if they have residual tumor. For details go to: http://virtualtrials.com/Clinical_Trials_Details.cfm?nct=NCT02209376
This is sadly the end of the drug Cilengitide. We all had high hopes for it. They tried many different combinations and all of the trials failed, so they are giving up on it. It is sad because it seemed to make a lot of sense, which we thought would translate into a benefit but it didn't work out.
This is a study of Temozolomide alone and in combinations with 3 different drugs that have been popular with brain tumor patients. I think this study is too small to really tell what is happening but it is interesting for 2 things:
1. The design of the trial is impressive - it is a new way to test multiple treatments. Great start and this is how trials should be run, but there were not enough people in each group.
2. Overall, there was no or minimal benefit to any combination tested over the Temodar alone. However, the group using isotretinoin (accutane) did much worse than all other combinations or even just Temodar alone. This shows that trials are always needed even when it seems to make sense to try adding something to the standard therapy. IF it is strong enough to help, it is also strong enough to hurt and a trial is the only way to tell if the benefits outweigh the risks.
There have been other trials showing a benefit to adding Accutane to the standard treatment, so more research needs to be done.
Sounds very exciting. The protien is a FGFR-TACC fusions in IDH wild type glioma
There are 2 historic events happening on Feb 18, 2015 in NY: The http://closingthegapnow.org/ "Closing the Gap" conference which is trying to get earlier access to experimental therapies for brain cancer patients, as well as the USA premier of the movie "Surviving Terminal Cancer" www.survivingterminalcancer.com, which stars some of our long term survivors: Ben Williams, Richard Gerber and Andrew Ferry (Andrew Yassin).
I mentioned this in the last news blast, but here is the official press release with more details!
The story of medical marijuana. Let's hope that the association with "ilegal drugs" doesn't stop the research on treating brain tumors.
Dr Fine is one of my favorite neuro-oncologists and has some great ideas. I wish him luck at his new position!
I love the concept. Just wonder if 1 dose of the drug is enough to tell. Maybe they should do a few days first.
The nice thing about this article is how the patient says he has no trouble sleeping with the Optune system on, and is comfortable wearing it. One of the reasons I hear for people not wanting to try it is they think it might not be comfortable.
The results for Gliadel wafer are impressive when you consider it is just a 1 time insertion of wafers. These wafers have been vastly underutilized at some brain tumor centers. The reason stated is usually that they would prevent you from entering some clinical trials but if you look at the history of clinical trials in the past, most did not result in a gain as good as Gliadel would have given. The restriction on prior use of Gliadel wafer for clinical trials should be removed immediately. It is not ethical to withhold a known benefit. At the very least, it should be required to at least discuss the risks and benefits of Gliadel before any brain tumor surgery.
I think this story is blown way out of proportion. There are so many worse risks with the pill, that the added risk of getting a brain tumor is way too small to worry about. The risk of developing blood clots with birth control pills is 1 in 1,000. The risk of developing a brain tumor is 2 in 500,000 over your lifetime. The methodology is also horrible. They compared 317 people who had brain tumors with eight age-matched women who didn't have gliomas. Then they extrapolate to the risk of how many will get a brain tumor out of 500,000 people. Doesn't sound like they correct for socio-economic factors. Perhaps poor woman use the pill less and are more likely to die of other thing associated with being poor.
Bottom line.. You need to keep risks of death in perspective. The risk of dying in a car crash are about 1 in 7,000, and we do not let that stop us from riding in cars.
