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This trial is for any type of cancer. Not sure yet if they include brain metastases. (They have another trial for GBM).
This is one of my favorite experimental treatments... and it looks like they may have found a better way t deliver it to where it is needed.
This sounds like one of the most promising avenues of research... find out why Avastin stops working and how to turn that around. I feel that the answer to this question may lead to a major breakthrough, hopefully using drugs that are already available so it can be used by all who need it quickly.
Avastin has gotten a lot of bad press recently. Here is some good news about Avastin from UCSF - one of the best brain tumor centers in the world!
There have been reports that Avastin causes the tumor to become more invasive. The thinking is that it works by stopping the tumor from forming new blood vessels, which are needed for the tumor to grow. However, when you cut off the blood supply to the tumor, you would think it makes sense that the tumor cells migrate and look for a new blood supply. There have been some reports that Avastin makes the tumor more invasive. This report says that is not true.
We had known about a link between cyto-megalovirus (CMV) and GBMs for a few years. This article gives an explanation of how the virus may activate a pathway that drives tumor growth. There is a drug available against the CMV - and it is in trials now in Europe. There is also a vaccine against this virus in trials. This opens the door not only for a treatment but the possibility of using a CMV vaccine to prevent the development of cancer (not only brain tumors)!
This trial looked at a large number of newly diagnosed GBM patients. 1/2 received the standard treatment of Surgery, Radiation and Temodar during radiation and for 6 months afterwards, or that same treatment + Avastin until recurrence. Temodar was stopped after 6 cycles in both groups.
The results weren't as good as we were hoping for but they are a small step foward. They reported no difference in median overall survival, but there was a big increase in progression free survival in the Avastin group ( 8.4 months vs. 4.3 months), as well as the % of patients alive at the 1 and 2 year points.
"Seventy-two percent of people treated in the Avastin arm were alive at one year compared to 66 percent of people in the placebo arm (p=0.049). Thirty-four percent were alive at two years compared to 30 percent, respectively (p=0.235)."
In human terms this means that although on average both groups lived about the same length of time, the Avastin group was in better shape for most of that time. This is very important. And more of the patients in the Avastin group went on to do much better than the ones in standard of care group.
So it looks like Avastin should play a role in the treatment of GBM but the question now become what is the best way to use it? For newly diagnosed or at recurrence? (It is already approved for recurrent GBM). Or perhaps in combination with other treatments.
More research is needed. We (The Musella Foundation) has been funding exciting research looking at ways to make Avastin work better. Hopefully we can figure out why it helps some patients and not others, then make it work for all.
(Disclosure: Genetech - the makers of Avastin - is one of our sponsors)
They found a link between some genes and the tumor's response to TTF. This may open the door to find out why it works so well on some people and not at all on others. Perhaps this may lead to a screening test to determine if it is worth even trying or better yet to adding a drug that will allow TTF to work for everyone. Exciting concept.
Fascinating article on how cells might become resistent to TTF and a simple way to fix that. (Simple in theory - but not yet available. I am sure they are working on it).
An update on the trial for recurrent GBM. A little better result than originally reported last year. Still not good enough but it is the best of approved treatments.
They found it is safe to mix Avastin and TTF but it did not do better than either alone. However, this was a very small study - only 6 patients had Avastin and TTF at the same time so it is hard to know how they would have done without any treatment.
This shows that adding TTF to radiation may result in a big increase in the effectiveness of the radiation. However, this was only in the test tube and on renal cell cancer and not brain cancer so more work needs to be done before we can say it is good to use with brain tumor radiation.
This is a free event presented by our friends at Mt Sinai. Sounds good.
This is another completely new concept in brain tumor treatments.
Exciting research on a new way to treat brain tumors. It is still only in the lab but this is a completely different treatment method. Cold Plasma is a gas that has been used to sterilize foods. It has now been found to have a strong effect on cancer cells. It is too early to try it on people, but this is something to keep an eye on
This is the full text of the technical article on Cold Atmospheric Plasma. See previous article for layman's version!
Please help with these fundraisers! Foward this to all of your friends - especially the Twitter part.
This talks about the relationship between pseudoprogression and MGMT status. We already knew that MGMT methylation status is very important in determining the prognosis.. and we already knew (from our last news blast) that people with pseudoprogression do better than people without. This ties it together and may be why: those positive MGMT patients - who would be expected to live longer), also are more likely to get pseudoprogresion.. This may mean the temodar works better as a radiation sensitizer when MGMT is methylated.
Pseudoprogression means that the MRI scan looks like there is progression when in reality it is not progression. It was rare until we started using Temodar at the same time as radiation, now it occurs in about 12% of the people according to this article (I heard other numbers of about 50%). This article is the first time I saw mention that there is a major survival advantage when you see pseudoprogression - more than double the survival time compared to people who do not get pseudoprogression.
Isotretinoin (Accutane) is a drug approved for acne. Some doctors have been using it as maintanance therapy for GBMs to try to slow down regrowth of the tumors. This article reports on a small number of patients who tried it. There was an amazing increase in progression free survival, but no significant difference in the 2 and 3 year survival numbers.
By itself, an increase in progression free survival is meaningful to patients - this means a longer time of feeling relatively good. It also brings up the opportunity to combine it with other treatments and give those other treatments more time to work.
