Timothy Cloughesy, MD: Targeted Therapy Vorasidenib Offers Hope for Deadly Brain Tumors

"In an international study co-led by UCLA, scientists have shown that a new targeted therapy drug can extend the amount of time people with a subtype of glioma are on treatment without their cancer worsening.

The finding suggests a possible new treatment option for people with the slow-growing but deadly brain tumor.

The team found the drug vorasidenib more than doubled progression-free survival in people with recurrent grade 2 glioma with IDH1 and IDH2 mutations. Compared with people who received a placebo, those who took vorasidenib went for nearly 17 more months without their cancer worsening, delaying the time before they needed to begin chemotherapy and radiation.

The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented today at the annual meeting of the American Society Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

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Dr. Timothy Cloughesy, a professor of neuro-oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and co-senior author of the study, said the availability of a treatment that enables patients to go for longer periods of time between chemotherapy and radiation treatments could have a major impact.

“We're always concerned about the delayed effects of radiation,” said Cloughesy, who is also a member of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

“Having the ability to hold off on getting radiation therapy to the brain with an effective therapy is really critical and very meaningful to this population of patients.”"

Read more at Neuroscience News.