Al's Comment:
This is one of the more important articles of the year, and for those of you who love reading highly technical medical literature, well worth reading the entire article (I can not post the full text on virtualtrials.com because of copyright restrictions). This explains how IL13Ra2 works and why it is so important. It also reviews the trials that targeted this and why they failed with hope for future trials.
As I was reading about the problems of the prior trials, which involved not being able to deliver the drug to the right place using convection enhanced delivery, I thought to presentations from the Tocagen trial which appear to have perfected convection enhanced delivery. I wonder if they repeated the trials today with the delivery technology from the Tocagen trial, perhaps we would have seen much better results.
Posted on: 04/12/2014
Neuro Oncol. 2014 Apr 10. [Epub ahead of print]
Significance of interleukin-13 receptor alpha 2-targeted glioblastoma therapy.
Thaci B1, Brown CE, Binello E, Werbaneth K, Sampath P, Sengupta S.
Author information:
1Brain Tumor Laboratory, Roger Williams Medical Center, Providence, Rhode Island (P.S., S.S.); Department of Neurosurgery, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts (B.T., K.W., E.B., P.S., S.S.); Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, City of Hope Hospital, Duarte, California (C.E.B.).
Abstract
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) remains one of the most lethal primary brain tumors despite surgical and therapeutic advancements. Targeted therapies of neoplastic diseases, including GBM, have received a great deal of interest in recent years. A highly studied target of GBM is interleukin-13 receptor α chain variant 2 (IL13Rα2). Targeted therapies against IL13Rα2 in GBM include fusion chimera proteins of IL-13 and bacterial toxins, nanoparticles, and oncolytic viruses. In addition, immunotherapies have been developed using monoclonal antibodies and cell-based strategies such as IL13Rα2-pulsed dendritic cells and IL13Rα2-targeted chimeric antigen receptor-modified T cells. Advanced therapeutic development has led to the completion of phase I clinical trials for chimeric antigen receptor-modified T cells and phase III clinical trials for IL-13-conjugated bacterial toxin, with promising outcomes. Selective expression of IL13Rα2 on tumor cells, while absent in the surrounding normal brain tissue, has motivated continued study of IL13Rα2 as an important candidate for targeted glioma therapy. Here, we review the preclinical and clinical studies targeting IL13Rα2 in GBM and discuss new advances and promising applications.
PMID: 24723564 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
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