Brain Cancer

Dabrafenib plus trametinib produced clinically meaningful objective responses rates in patients with recurrent or progressive BRAF V600E mutation–positive glioma.

A biologics license application seeking the approval of 131I-omburtamab in the treatment of pediatric patients with central nervous system/leptomeningeal metastases from neuroblastoma has been resubmitted to the FDA.

Encouraging response rates to a dual-targeted regimen in patients with recurrent or refractory malignant brain tumors with BRAF V600E mutations were reported in 2021, representing a new potential targeted therapy strategy against glioblastoma.

Consortium seeks to advance underdeveloped area of brain cancer research, advance drug development, and improve treatment options for patients

A subset of patients with EGFR-positive glioblastoma experienced significantly longer progression-free survival when treated with adjuvant neratinib following chemoradiation vs adjuvant temozolomide alone, although no overall PFS benefit or any overall survival improvement was seen in the overall population.

The Data Safety Monitoring Board has determined that it is safe and appropriate to continue recruitment to the expansion arm of the phase 1/2 GLORIA trial, which is examining a novel combination comprised of NOX-A12, radiotherapy, and bevacizumab in glioblastoma and incomplete tumor resection.

Chemoimmunotherapy is still a relatively new strategy for patients with pediatric neuroblastoma, and the humanized anti-disialoganglioside monoclonal antibody hu14.18K322A could provide a breakthrough for children with high-risk disease.

The FDA has granted a fast track designation to ST101, a peptide antagonist of C/EBPβ, for the treatment of patients with recurrent glioblastoma.

Concurrent use of tumor-treating fields, radiation therapy, and temozolomide is under study as a potential treatment for patients with newly diagnosed, stage IV glioblastoma.

The FDA has granted a rare pediatric disease designation to lutetium-177-omburtamab-DTPA for use as a potential therapeutic option in pediatric patients with medulloblastoma, according to an announcement from Y-mAbs Therapeutics, Inc., the developer of the product.

The FDA has granted an orphan drug designation to LP-184 as a potential therapeutic option for patients with glioblastoma multiforme and other malignant gliomas.

The FDA has granted a fast track designation to the highly selective CK2 inhibitor silmitasertib as a potential therapeutic option for patients with recurrent sonic hedgehog–driven medulloblastoma

Cellular medicine could represent the next frontier in the treatment of patients with cancer and many other diseases with a high unmet need.

The FDA has granted a fast track designation to berubicin as a potential therapeutic option for patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is pursuing several novel approaches, including viro-immunotherapy and genetically engineered natural killer cells to treat patients with glioblastoma, while also conducting tumor analysis to better comprehend the disease.

The Japan Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare has granted conditional and time-limited approval to teserpaturev for the treatment of patients with malignant glioma; this is the first oncolytic virus to receive approval for use in this indication or any primary brain cancer.

The personalized cancer vaccine AV-GBM-1, developed by AIVITA Biomedical Inc., significantly improved progression-free survival over standard of care in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma.

Innovative strategies are vital for patients diagnosed with rare cancers, who are frequently at a disadvantage compared with those who have more common malignancies, experts say.

Standard response assessment in neuro-oncology- and immunotherapy RANO-defined progression-free did not correlate with overall survival vs modified RANO-defined PFS, which strongly correlated with OS in patients with recurrent glioblastoma treated with MDNA55 in a phase 2 trial, suggesting that mRANO may be the optimal means of therapeutic response assessment in recurrent glioblastoma.

Stephanie E. Weiss, MD, FASTRO and Eric M. Horwitz, MD, FABS, FASTRO, discuss ways to leverage radiation in the treatment of central nervous system metastases, areas of active investigation, and different available strategies that are improving outcomes for patients with cancer.

Cell-free methylated DNA immunoprecipitation-sequencing uses plasma cell-free methylomes to detect and classify several types of cancer early on, and provides the opportunity to monitor tumors for response to treatment in noninvasive way.

Natural killer T cells that co-express GD2-CAR and interleukin-15 were found to be safe and to demonstrate evidence of in vivo expansion and localization to metastatic sites in patients with stage IV relapsed/refractory neuroblastoma.

Thomas Bachelot, MD, discussed how to approach treatment of patients with HER2-positive breast cancer and CNS metastases and the impact of tucatinib in this population.

The FDA has granted a rare pediatric disease designation to the p-STAT3 inhibitor WP1066 for the treatment of patients with ependymoma, a rare type of tumor that can develop in the brain or the spinal cord.

Dual inhibition of the MAPK pathway using the BRAF and MEK inhibitors dabrafenib and trametinib, respectively, resulted in durable clinical benefit for patients with BRAF V600E mutant low- and high-grade glioma.

The FDA has recommended the early termination of a phase 2 trial examining the cell-based immunotherapy ERC1671 in combination with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor, cyclophosphamide, and bevacizumab in patients with glioblastoma.

Because the current standard-of-care modalities have significant limitations, there has been a great interest in pursuing immunotherapeutic strategies for glioblastoma.

February 5, 2021 - The potent CDK9 inhibitor zotiraciclib, when used in combination was temozolomide, was found to induce clinically meaningful efficacy with a tolerable safety profile in patients with recurrent, high-grade gliomas.

January 7, 2020 - The FDA has approved the request submitted by Moleculin Biotech, Inc. for rare disease designations to be granted their drug candidate WP1066, an agent that appears to directly elicit tumor cell death and rouse the immune system to eliminate tumors.

January 5, 2020 - A new drug application has been submitted to Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare for the oncolytic virus teserpaturev for use in the treatment of patients with malignant glioma.