Deadly brain tumor responds positively to new therapy, Boston researchers say

BOSTON — It killed Senators Ted Kennedy and John McCain, as well as President Biden’s son, Beau.

Glioblastoma, an aggressive and usually fatal brain tumor, kills some 10,000 Americans each year, according to the National Brain Tumor Society. The average survival after diagnosis is just eight months.

While the outlook for glioblastoma patients is grim, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital are reporting positive results on a new treatment.

It’s a virus -- specially engineered to target glioblastoma cells without harming normal tissue. The treatment, CAN-3110, elicits a local immune response by infecting cancer cells with a modified form of the herpes simplex virus.

The researchers tested this gene therapy in 41 patients with “high-grade” gliomas. They found that patients responding most favorably to the treatment had previously been infected with herpes simplex 1 (HSV1), a virus that causes cold sores. Those patients saw median survival rise to 14.2 months.

It appears the therapy worked best in patients previously infected with HSV1 because they had pre-existing antibodies to the virus. Those antibodies rapidly activated and attacked the ‘infected’ tumor -- with the resulting inflammatory response attracting even more immune cells to the area of the cancer.

The researchers found evidence that CAN-3110 treatment also induced a broad immune response -- possibly because glioblastoma cells killed by the treatment released cancer antigens. This also seemed to contribute to improved survival.

This study of CAN-3110 was meant to establish its safety. Along those lines, two patients experienced seizures after administration.

The researchers plan further studies to test whether more frequent dosing of the altered virus might be even more beneficial to glioblastoma patients.

The research is published in the journal Nature.

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