Researchers at the University of Kentucky have identified a key genetic biomarker that treatment teams could rely on to predict which patients having glioblastoma stand higher chances of benefiting from bevacizumab, a cancer drug.
The study, whose findings were published in the journal JCO Precision Oncology, found that patients who had a genetic alteration referred to as CDK4 and were treated using bevacizumab tended to have longer survival times when compared to patients that underwent the same treatment but didn’t have this genetic change.
This finding suggests that conducting tests to identify this particular genetic change could help medical teams to identify the patients with the highest likelihood of deriving benefits from undergoing bevacizumab treatment.
Professor John Villano, the lead author of the study, explains that the findings of their research could provide a way for oncologists to have more information at their disposal while making treatment decisions for GBM patients.
With this information, patients that are least likely to benefit from being treated using bevacizumab could be spared from undergoing the treatment and other options are explored. In this way, valuable time could be saved while also avoiding exposing those patients to unnecessary adverse effects of the medication yet limited benefit is likely to be obtained.
Glioblastoma, the most aggressive type of brain cancer, is hard to treat and patients usually succumb to the cancer within 15 months of being diagnosed. Bevacizumab works by blocking the growth of blood vessels within the tumor. Many patients who undergo this treatment have their survival extended and symptoms of the disease reduce since the tumors aren’t spreading. However, it hasn’t been possible to make a predetermination of which patients stand to benefit from this treatment and which ones are unlikely to be helped.
This study provides a way to make that decision. The researchers obtained tumor samples from more than 3,000 GBM patients. Almost 600 of those samples came from patients that had been treated with bevacizumab. Advanced sequencing tools were used to analyze the molecular profiles of different patients while paying attention to the duration spent while undergoing treatment.
The analysis revealed the specific genetic alteration that increased the odds of beneficial treatment with this particular drug. No other study of this scale had been undertaken before with a focus on identifying molecular biomarkers associated with prolonged beneficial use of this medication.
This research marks another step forward in understanding how cancer treatment works in relation to factors within individual patients. As more treatment options for brain cancers like GBM are developed by firms like CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP), a time may come when every patient has a treatment option that can be beneficial to them.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/CNSP
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