This Sunday night's webinar is about stereotactic radiosurgery for vestibular schwannomas, but it is applicable to all brain tumors!   The following webinar is about GammaTile, and there is new data recently presented at a scientific meeting that we now be presented here (in easy to understand language!)

 This was our longest runs ever of having the program open!  We reopened the program on January 4, 2022. In those 4 months we received 231 applications to our program, and of those, we approved 194.  The rejections were due to patients not meeting the qualifications of tumor type, income or having insurance. 

We gave out a total (since the program started in Dec 2011) of $9.98 million dollars in grants to patients to help them get access to the treatments they need!  Each patient gets a grant of up to $5,000 which they use for the copays for Optune, Temodar, Avastin and Gleostine as well as the generics of these treatments.   If they do not use the entire grant in a 1 year period, we take back the remaining funds and add it back into our copay fund to be reused for someone else!

 This is the recording of my webinar from last night.  It is an important one that anyone interested in any serious diseases should watch.. I also need you to take action and help us pass the promising pathway act. The video explains what the proposed law is and how to help!

 This is from our good friends and partner Cancer Commons.    The webinar focuses on the caregiver - who is usually neglected but is of utmost importance! Should be worthwhile to watch!

 The results are outstanding. Over 200% increase in the 5 year survival rate for newly diagnosed Glioblastomas as well as in the 30 month survival for recurrent Glioblastoma. There has been some unfair criticism of the trial on the internet -but watch the video and get the details directly from the source!   The same criticism happened after every major trial for brain tumors this century.  I used to think there were just people who could not grasp the details and we were just not explaining things right, but it turned out that it was just a few people trying to manipulate the stock market and has nothing to do with the actual science.  When you see anything about this or any trial - consider the source. If it is a financial blog, just ignore it!

 This is an important webinar. I will be explaining my Three point plan to speed up the search for the cure. The promising pathway act is a large part of it but there are other pieces needed!

Should be exciting.

 As I mentioned in another news article, we badly need donations!  Please participate in one of these events - you can participate in the Virtual Event from anywhere!  Or just make a donation on our website at virtualtrials.org  click DONATE!

Thanks!

 This copayment assistance program is a life saving program.  I know we all like to donate to brain tumor research only - which is one of the options we offer where 100% of your donation goes to brain tumor research. However, there are other needs like the Copay Assistance Program where your donation directly saves lives. We need donations for research and the copay program as well as our advocacy efforts.   Our fundraisers are again being negatively impacted by Covid. To donate go to virtualtriasl.org and click donate!

 Very well deserved!  Dr Germano performed one of the brain tumor surgeries on my sister-in-law's GBM.   I then invited her to join the Musella Foundation medical advisory board and she has been a valuable participant since! She serves on our grants committee to help us find and fund the most promising of research!

 Sitoiganap  is an experimental vaccine therapy for Glioblastoma.   It used to be called ERC1671 and Gliovac.  Early trials look very good so the FDA is stopping the phase 2 trial and allowing them to start a phase 3 trial.  I wish them luck.  

 The results are in and they look very good! Follow the link below to see the slides from the results presentation. I am working on getting the video of the presentation – not sure if I can but if I do, it will be linked to that page! This is a major advance in the treatment of not only brain tumors but it is applicable to all solid tumors.

 Unfortunately, the addition of Nivolumab to the old standard of radiation and Temozolomide (without Optune) did not result in any improvement in survival or progression free survival. Strangely. we always assumed that patients using steroids would do worse but with both the Nivolumab group and the placebo group did a drop better than those without steroids.  That doesn't mean steroids help - just that they do not hurt as much as we thought!

 These webinars give you a chance to ask questions of leaders in the field! Well worth watching. We broadcast them on Zoom, and simulcast them on Facebook.  It is easiest to ask questions via the zoom interface.  If you can't watch live, we post recordings in our video library!

 This may be the breakthrough that we needed.  It has not been tested on people yet (that we know of), so it is too early to get really excited but this may lead to an actual cure. This technology can edit, insert or delete any gene from the tumor.  We need to make sure it is safe first, then figure out which genes to edit.  

 This is an exciting new drug that targets EGFR mutations and is brain penetrant.   I doubt if this drug by itself will be the cure, but it will probably help a lot, and may be a part of the ultimate cocktail that is the cure.  

 This confirms what I said in a recent editorial about using Optune with Keytruda.  Optune has a positive effect on the immune response to the tumor.  It is imperative that we try various combinations to take advantage of that effect.

 Each part of this combination did well in early trials, and the idea of combining them is that the oncolytic virus will create an inflammatory reaction around the tumor which would make the Car-T cells work better.  For other types of cancers, Car-t cells provided cures in a high % of patients, but so far hasn't been able to repeat that level of success in brain tumors. This combination is an attempt at the home run - bringing that success to brain tumors. 

Disclaimer: Mustang Bio is a proud sponsor of the Musella Foundation

 This is one of my favorite conferences, and UCLA is also one of my favorite brain tumor centers. (perhaps biased as I am on their patient advisory board).  They are working on a lot of really promising stuff and this is the time to learn about it! It is free but you need to register in advance.  

 This exciting clinical trial has recently opened for patients with relapsed or refractory Glioblastomas.  The Musella Foundation has funded early work on this drug, and we had a webinar about it. See  https://virtualtrials.org/video2021.cfm?video=202105 for information about how the drug works!

 This is groundbreaking.. for pediatric (and probably adult) high grade gliomas including glioblastomas, anaplastic astrocytoma,s diffuse midline glioma and others, which have a BRAF mutation, treating with a BRAF inhibitor and possibly a MEK inhibitor resulted in most patients having a durable response.  Survivals were better than those using the standard of care.   This is early data and they are testing it in a clinical trial but it may be worth asking your doctor about if your path report mentions a BRAF mutation.