Researchers at Keck Medicine, University of Southern California (USC) have discovered that combining immunotherapy with laser heat therapy could significantly extend the survival of individuals diagnosed with deadly brain cancers.
Astrocytoma, which includes cancers like glioblastoma, grows aggressively and usually recurs after patients have undergone surgery to remove the tumors. This makes the cancer difficult to treat, and patients rarely survive for more than 5 months once diagnosed with high-grade astrocytoma.
Immunotherapies, treatments that leverage the body’s immune system to fight cancer, work remarkably well in addressing cancers found in other body parts. However, these treatments exhibit dismal results when used against brain cancers. This is because the blood-brain barrier (BBB) blocks not just cancer treatments and harmful substances but also immune cells from reaching the brain. The Keck researchers sought a way to allow immunotherapy into the brain so that the T-cells can attack the cancer.
The Phase 1/2b trial they conducted involved 45 patients that had high-grade astrocytoma. The research team divided the participants into two groups, with one group receiving only the immune check-point inhibitor therapy pembrolizumab after surgery while the other group underwent surgery and received LITT (laser interstitial thermal therapy) followed by the same immunotherapy as the control group.
The team found that the control group that underwent surgery and then received the immunotherapy didn’t survive for 18 months while those who underwent surgery, received LITT therapy and thereafter had the immunotherapy had nearly half of the population still alive at 18 months.
These results suggested that the LITT therapy enabled the immunotherapy to get through to the brain and attack the cancer after tumor materials circulated in the blood and alerted immune cells to the cancer inside the brain. The researchers found that the LITT therapy disrupted the BBB for several weeks, opening a window for the immune check-point inhibitor to reach the brain and penetrate the astrocytoma tumor.
This combination treatment was well tolerated by the patients and offers hope to those afflicted by these deadly tumors, especially patients in the advanced stages of the cancer with minimal treatment options that can extend survival meaningfully.
Additional studies using larger populations will need to be conducted to provide further proof of the efficacy and safety of this approach. However, the current findings indicate that this combination therapy could be a game-changer in using check-point inhibitors to treat brain cancers.
Entities like CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) that are engaged in developing medications indicated for various primary and metastatic brain cancers could find this USC study of great interest since it opens the door to making existing treatments useful in malignancies that had so far been unresponsive to these therapies.
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