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 September 2023 edition in full online here.
Some highlights from this month’s round-up:
- The 2023 International Brain Tumour Awareness Week (Saturday, 28th October to Saturday 4th November 2023, inclusive) is fast approaching. This special week is a celebration of awareness-raising activities around the world in which the international brain tumour community unites to draw attention to the challenges of brain tumours and the need for increased research and support efforts. Find out more here.
- Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK are conducting a survey to understand the barriers patients diagnosed with low grade gliomas face when returning to work. The researchers would like to invite individuals with low-grade glioma to complete a questionnaire, which is part of a PhD project. By completing this questionnaire, patients will be contributing to a greater understanding of barriers to returning to work and will allow development of vocational rehabilitation to assist patients in the future. The questionnaire will take approximately ten minutes to complete. All answers given are anonymous. The questionnaire can be found using this link.
- A tiny device, roughly the size of a grain of rice, can test the effects of up to 20 drugs on a patient’s brain tumour in real-time during neurosurgery, without causing any adverse effects according to details of a pilot clinical trial which have been published in Science Translational Medicine.
- A team of clinical psychologists at VCU Massey Cancer Center in the United States have received a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to help treat insomnia among military members, veterans, their beneficiaries and the general public who have been diagnosed with brain cancer. The new funding will be used to implement a virtual telehealth therapeutic intervention program through a controlled, randomized clinical trial that, if beneficial, can lead to a larger efficacy study, which could help brain cancer patients nationwide.
- Researchers from Heidelberg and Mannheim in Germany have treated adult patients diagnosed with advanced midline gliomas with an H3K27M-specific long peptide vaccine (H3K27M-vac) which showed a promising immune response, according to a report of the team’s work in Nature Medicine.
- The treatments dabrafenib plus trametinib result in significantly more responses and longer progression-free survival than standard chemotherapy for paediatric patients with low-grade glioma with BRAF V600 mutations, according to a phase II trial, the results of which have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study’s researchers also concluded that dabrafenib plus trametinib had “a better safety profile than standard chemotherapy as first-line therapy.”
To see an archive of existing e-News issues, click here.
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