The concept behind this trial is to see if starting radiation therapy the same time as the initial surgery instead of a few weeks later will work much better.   Usually, you wait until the surgical incision heals before starting radiation. This gives the tumor a chance to start growing back.  Implanting GammaTile at the time of surgery starts the radiation immediately not giving the tumor that extra time to grow back. Makes sense. And since the radiation is only delivered where it is needed, it shouldn't interfere with the wound haling from the surgery.   

 It was very interesting. A new approach to targeted radiation therapy not only for metastatic tumors but also for primary brain tumors.

 We are hosting the webinar about Plus Therapeutics' targeted radiation therapy.  The focus is on leptomeningeal mets but applies to most brain tumor types.  The webinar is TODAY Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022 at 7PM Eastern time.  Go to https://virtualtrials.org/webinar a few minutes before the start time!

 Nimotuzumab is a monoclonal antibody against EGFR. It is considered experimental in the USA but is approved in a few other countries.   Adding Nimotuzumab to radiation and Temodar resulted in a big improvement. For all Glioblastoma patients, it resulted in a 11 month increase in survival.  For MGMT unmethylated patients the results were more remarkable:  overall survival was 6.7 months without Nimotuzumab and 19.3 months with it.     

As I keep saying, we need to change the regulations so we can get access to treatments like this here in the USA. 

 This test can not only tell if you have a brain tumor, but can also tell the difference between primary brain tumors and metastatic tumors, with 96% to 100% accuracy which is amazing.  Hopefully they can perfect the test so that it can tell if treatments are working, or if the tumor is recurring.    Perhaps early detection using this as a routine screening tool migh allow better treatments.

 Our next webinar will be on Sunday Oct 9, 2022 at 7PM eastern.  This will be about Plus Therapeutics' experimental therapy called Rhenium-186 NanoLiposome (186RNL). The trial is for Recurrent Glioblastoma, Pediatric Brain Cancer as well as Leptomeningeal Metastases. This webinar will focus on the Leptomeningeal Metastases part of the trial but also applies to those other tumors mentioned!

  The free webinar will be presented live in our Zoom room where it is easy to ask questions, but we will also try to broadcast it on Facebook. After the event we will post the video on our website, virtualtrials.org, as well as on Facebook and Youtube.  If you like to ask questions, our zoom room is the easiest.

 This is in clinical trials now. If it works, it has the potential for a major breakthrough - there are many treatments that kill the brain tumors in the lab but do not work in people because of the blood brain barrier. This new device opens the blood brain barrier temporarily to allow treatments to get where they are needed! And it sounds a lot safer and easier for the patient than alternative ways around the blood brain barrier. Good luck to them with this trial!

 This gives a great overview of the work being done to treat diffuse midline gliomas and DIPG.   We helped fund the project through our partnership with the DIPG Collaborative.

 This is remarkable results for a vaccine therapy.  This is the first reported results of a treatment used for brain tumors under the Right To Try law.   They treated patients with recurrent Glioblastoma who historically lived an average of 8 months.  With this treatment, average survival was 19.6 months, with 25% of patients alive at the end of the trial at about the 40 month mark.   They are tweaking the protocol to make it work even better. There was minimal side effects.     

 Gamma Tile is FDA approved and available at many other major hospitals. If you are about to have a surgery for a malignant brain tumor - primary or metastatic, it is worth asking your doctor about it.

 This new type of treatment - Sonodynamic therapy - is one of my favorites as it is so elegant.  A dye is given to the patient, and the dye accumulates mostly in the tumor cells.  Then they apply MRI guided focused ultrasound to the area of the tumor. The focused ultrasound excites the dye molecules which kills the tumor cells and leaves the normal cells unharmed. This is not invasive - the focused ultrasound it applied using a helmet like device.  The trial is now open for DIPG as well as Glioblastoma. Although we have no results yet, it is worth considering. Theoretically it harms only tumor cells, and can be repeated as often as needed.  

 I usually write these books on my own and have an editor format them and convert my writing to real English.  This time I had a lot of help:   Channah Piscioneri  and Linda Singer  did most of the work this time. A huge thanks to them. I couldn't have done it without them. 

 This is from our good friends at the University of Florida Brain Tumor Center! Sounds like fun!

 This  life saving program ran out of funding again.   It is funded entirely by donations that are earmarked for this program. We do not use donations that are not specifically for this program.   If you would like to make a donation, go to virtualtrials.org/donate and select 'for copay program' when you make the donation!

 This is from our good friends at Cancer Commons!   They are going to try to make it easy to understand for those few out there that are not PhDs in Biochemistry!  They will explain the different types of testing and who needs which types, and the benefits of testing. They will talk about brain tumors but it applies to all cancer types. The webinar is  free and will take place on September 14, 2022, at 12:00 PM PT / 3:00 PM ET.  Follow the link to register.  A recording of it will be available on their website a few days later.

 This is a video about an exciting new clinical trial for recurrent Glioblastoma, which the Musella Foundation helped fund!   The video explains why they think this oral drug may work!

   This $25,000 grant moves us ahead of the yearly brain tumor research grant totals for each of the last 2 years!  We gave out $505,000 for brain tumor research so far this year!   We gave out $427,000 in 2021 and  $500,292 in 2020.  The most we ever gave out in one year, pre-pandemic, was $625,695.00 in 2018!  Hopefully we will get back to that level next year!   

 The compassionate use program is for patients with pediatric diffuse midline glioma (DMG) and DIPG. OKN-007 is an experimental drug that works on the tumor microenvironment.  See https://oblatoinc.com/our-science/#01 for details.    

There are also clinical trials going on for this drug for both newly diagnosed and recurrent Glioblastoma. I am excited about this drug - as we (the Musella Foundation) gave them one of their first brain tumor research grants to get this drug started 9 years ago and have been keeping up with their research since then.

xCures is running the expanded access program for Oblato.  (Disclaimer: I am a paid consultant to xCures).  This program is being run the way all expanded access programs should be run - and the way we ran the original Onc-201 trial- collect the data from the patients the same as if in a regular trial so we can learn from every patient's experiences. This data can be used to confirm the data from the trials and hopefully speed up FDA and insurance approvals. 

If you have a pediatric DIPG or DMG, go to https://xcures.com/details/okn007/ for details. For patients with Glioblastomas, contact our patient navigation program for help.

We gave out two grants today:

We have been foundational partners to the Children's Brain Tumor Network (CBTN) for many years.  The CBTN operates a centralized tumor tissue repository where all of the samples have a complete genomic analysis and medical history. This resource is shared with the research community allowing for projects to be done that would be impossible without resources like this. The best use of the data is when a drug company develops a drug for adult cancers, they can use this resource to see if there are any pediatric brain tumors that might be helped by the drug.  This data has been used by 289 pediatric brain tumor research projects so far, and there are over 4,500 patients.

The second grant is unique - there is a clinical trial just starting and the researchers were wondering if the microbiome of the gut influences the response to the drugs in the trial.  It has been shown to have an influence in other cancers.  They asked us to fund this add on study.  We gave out so many grants recently that we ran out of money in our grant fund.  I asked the Cure Starts Now to split the grant with us, and they immediately agreed and paid half of the grant! Thanks to the Cure Starts Now we were able to quickly fund this worthwhile project!

 Dr. Tessler, the neurosurgeon who did the awake surgery on this  patient, is one of my favorite neurosurgeons and is on our medical advisory board.