The IBTA’s monthly e-News has been released and has emailed to all subscribers. Emailed to over 5,000 people around the globe, including clinicians, patients, researchers and others, it gives a round-up of the latest research and treatment developments, news about brain tumour patient organisations around the world, and key forthcoming neuro-oncology scientific and patient conferences. You can sign up to receive the e-News every month by registering here.
This month’s highlights
You can read the IBTA e-News August 2023 edition in full online here.
Some highlights from this month’s round-up:
- In September 2022, key stakeholders met virtually to define research priorities which addressed areas of unmet need for people with brain metastases. This has given rise to a Policy Review published in The Lancet Oncology which “outlines existing knowledge gaps, collaborative opportunities and specific recommendations regarding consensus priorities and future directions in brain metastases research.”
- Northwest Biotherapeutics has announced that it plans to submit a Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) in the United Kingdom to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA – the equivalent of the U.S. FDA), for commercial approval of the Company’s DCVax®-L treatment for glioblastoma.
- According to a paper published in the journal Cancers researchers have developed a novel way to use a type of PET scan (immuno-PET) that could become a new form of screening to identify glioblastoma patients most likely to benefit from checkpoint inhibitors, a type of immunotherapy.
- A phase 2 clinical trial for adults with recurrent IDH-mutated gliomas is underway at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI). The study will examine whether the drug nivolumab can slow the growth in recurrent gliomas which carry IDH1 or IDH2 mutations.
- According to a study published in Clinical Lung Cancer, machine learning-aided prediction models are able to learn the relationship between clinical features and subsequent development of brain metastases (BM) in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The study involved 395 patients with NSCLC. It found that certain features including being an adenocarcinoma, having higher tumour grade and the involvement of lymph nodes were linked to a higher risk of developing BM. Age, and squamous cell carcinoma histology were negatively correlated. A subgroup discovery analysis identified two candidate patient subpopulations appearing to present a higher risk.
- The drug paxalisib – Kazia Therapeutics’ lead programme – has been given Fast Track Designation (FTD) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of solid tumour brain metastases harbouring P13K pathway mutations in combination with radiotherapy, according to a company press release.
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