A Promising New Treatment Combination for Glioblastoma

Scientists from Northwestern Medicine have made a huge step forward in the treatment of glioblastoma by developing an ultrasound technology that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and provide a small dose of a chemotherapy and immunotherapy drug cocktail. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.

The analysis comprised 4 patients who had advanced progression of their brain tumors and had already been treated with conventional chemotherapy plus an experimental treatment in a clinical trial. In both instances, the patients’ tumors returned. The scientists used a small dose (smaller than the dose used for traditional chemotherapy regimens) of doxorubicin in conjunction with immune checkpoint antibodies, which can boost the recognition of malignant glioblastoma cells by the immune system and reinvigorate the lymphocytes that can attack cancer cells.

“This is the first report in humans where an ultrasound device has been used to deliver drugs and antibodies to glioblastoma to change the immune system so it can recognize and attack the brain cancer,” said co-corresponding author Dr. Adam Sonabend, an associate professor of neurological surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a neurosurgeon at Northwestern Medicine, via a press release. “This could be a major advance for the treatment of glioblastoma, which has been a frustratingly difficult cancer to treat, in part due to poor penetration of circulating drugs and antibodies into the brain.”

Catalina Lee-Chang, an assistant professor of neurological surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and co-corresponding author, added: “This is a great example of translational bench-to-bedside-back-to-bench research, which sets an exceptional scenario to learn about the ability of the immune system to kill brain tumors in real time upon treatment. Given the lack of effective immune response against these deadly tumors, these findings encourage us to envision a potential new treatment approach.”