These patients were MGMT unmethylated, and did not have a complete resection - which puts them in an unfavorable prognostic group. These numbers look very good for that group.

 New article added to our website, listing testing options.  A must read if you will be having a surgery or biopsy soon.  

 We awarded a $100,000 grant to get this expanded access program for oral gallium maltolate launched.  I will let you know when it opens.  We helped fund the early work on this drug and early results look good.  If interested in trying to get access, send an email to eap@imagingbiometrics.com and tell them a little about your case and ask if you may qualify for the program and to get on the waiting list.   Our grant only covers PART of the costs of this program - and enabled getting it opened. Patients will be charged a portion of the costs.      If any other organizations want to help fund the full program to make it free to patients,  contact me!  We are working on creating a fund to help offset these cost - will let you know details when ready!

 This article talks about conditional approval of drugs - like what we are trying to do with the Promising Pathway Act.   A quick update on the Promising Pathway Act:  we are working on version 2.0 of the act, to address the critics.  It should be introduced to Congress in Febuary or March.  When it does, we will need everyone to write letters again. I will let you kmow!

 This is one of my favorite trials.  We did a webinar about it a few years ago https://virtualtrials.org/video2022.cfm?video=202205 and will probably do another in the next few months.   They have a trial going for recurrent grade 3 and 4 gliomas (Glioblastoma, Anaplastic Astrocytoma, High grade diffuse glioma), and this guide gives the details about the trial.   

 Hope this is available soon. They have a very high accuracy rate. 

 There has been a problem with patients getting counterfeit Onc-201 from Germany.  Chimerix, the company who is making the real version,  has released a statement about the situation and how they are trying to help.   This is valid as of 1/28/24 but it may change suddenly - so contact the company for information if you are affected!

 Nice review of convection enhanced delivery.   The technology is getting better to the point where it looks like it is usable today.  Early trials may have failed because the CED did not get the drug to the entire tumor but today they are much better at it. 

 We have heard rumors that infections in the surgical site may help survival. This study looks at the data and concludes that there is no difference in median survival but a small increase in progression free survival, but it is more than offset by the doubling of time spent in the hospital.   So the point is - do not intentionally get infected!

 Good review of GammaTile.  They show what the implant looks like, how it is designed and used, and statistics from the trials.  They show the importance of starting radiation immediately at the time of surgery instead of waiting the usually few weeks or months to start. The numbers loo pretty good and although it is easily available at most major centers, there are also clinical trials going on of it!

 I am proud to say I am on Duke's patient advocacy board.    This program will help pay the expenses for children with brain tumors to be treated at, or even just to get a second opion, at Duke. We (the Musella Foundation) was one of the funders of the  recombinant polio-rhinovirus immunotherapy for recurrent pediatric high-grade glioma mentioned in the article!

 Very interesting research.  They took many biopsies from each tumor and mapped them. They found that there is a lot of variation between areas of the tumor, to the point where it almost doesn't make sense to use a targeted treatment based on just a single biopsy.  Even MGMT methylations levels varied a lot from different areas of the tumor.  This reinforces the concept used by DCVAX - which uses tumor lysate to try to make the vaccine against all of the targets found throughout the tumor instead of trying to pick the one or handful of most important targets from a single biopsy.

 This is brilliant work.  A huge problem we have is that when a patient is diagnosed with having MGMT Unmethylated Glioblastoma, it is much less likely that Temozolomide will help, and they have been shown to have a much shorter survival time.  These researcher figured out a way to convert MGMT unmethylated tumors into MGMT methylated tumors, using a viral delivery of CRISPR.  It is still only pre-clinical but a new approach that should help a lot!

 This poster compares GammTile to stereotactic radiosurgery for brain metastasis and found that the GammaTiles covered the tumor area better with less radiation to the normal brain.

 Proud to say that the Musella Foundation helped to fund this project!    It is a new approach to brain tumor treatment targeting the iron metabolism in the cells.  The conclusion of this study in lab rats was:  "Monotherapy with the iron-mimetic GaM profoundly inhibits trGBM growth and significantly extends disease-specific survival in vivo."  This is in a clinical trial in recurrent Glioblastoma now.  It is an oral drug apparently without major side effects. We will keep a close eye on this.

The Musella Foundation helped fund this important research project.  They reported on the safety and accuracy of placing catheters into pediatric brain tumors to be used to infuse treatments,  and found only 1 complications  (which was corrected by suturing a tear in the dura matter) out of 49 catheter placements, and the accuracy was over 93% of the catheters were placed correctly. Not perfect but much better than reports from 10 years ago where less than half were placed correctly!

 This is an interesting research project.   In theory, PI3Kinase Inhibitors  should work well on brain tumors but in the past, results were not great.  This project uses a new drug that can cross the blood brain barrier, and combines it with an immune checkpoint inhibitor.   Checkpoint inhibitors by themselves have not shown much success in brain tumors either. The research proposes that this drug will increase the immunogenicity of  the tumor, allowing the immune checkpoint inhibitor to work better.

One of the keys to the breakthrough is understanding what we are fighting. This line of research is shedding light on why the tumor becomes resistant to treatment and offers a solution.   The cure  might not be the drug they mention but the approach they use may lead to a major breakthrough.  They are working on creating a test that will find the best available drug for each tumor.  Excellent work.