Not for everyone, but it helped
In oncology, targeted treatment involves blocking the growth and spread of a tumor due to specific changes in proteins or genes that are involved in the growth, progression and spread of cancer. Currently, there are no methods of targeted treatment of brain tumors, since their creation requires intensive research efforts to identify targets and develop drugs against them. In addition, when a tumor is localized in the brain, there is an additional problem of creating drugs that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier.
The results of a phase 1 clinical trial conducted by a group from the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and the Institute of Cancer Research, London, showed that the drug lizavanbulin caused a clinical response in some patients with glioblastoma, an aggressive malignant brain tumor. Lizavanbulin was effective in patients with high expression of EB1 protein (end-binding protein 1).
The results of the Phase 1 clinical trial presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2021 conference show that two out of three EB1-positive patients included in the study showed a sustained response to treatment, while the tumor in one patient decreased by more than 80%.
The results of previous studies have shown that lizavanbulin is able to slow down the growth or even shrink tumors in some EB1-positive patients with glioblastoma, for whom there are practically no available treatment options. In preclinical studies on mice, lizavanbulin easily penetrated the brain and targeted cancer cells, and the presence of the EB1 protein was a predictor of the response to treatment.
Every year in the UK, 5,000 people are diagnosed with glioblastoma, and about 5% of them are EB1-positive.
The researchers believe that lizavanbulin is effective for this group of patients because EB1 is involved in the functioning of microtubules necessary for the division of cancer cells. Since lizavanbulin acts on microtubules, it means that the treatment of EB1-positive patients interferes with the process of cell division, leading to increased death of cancer cells.
After receiving these results, a phase 2 clinical trial was launched for EB1-positive patients with progressive glioblastoma. The Royal Marsden Hospital is spearheading this study, and centers across the UK, Switzerland and Germany are currently recruiting patients.
The new era of personalized medicine makes it possible to identify markers in cancer cells that indicate which treatment can be effective for a particular patient. The results of this study show that patients with progressive glioblastoma who have the EB1 protein detected can be treated with lizavanbulin, a targeted drug that blocks the growth of cancer cells.
Patients with glioblastoma currently have very low survival rates and have no treatment options, so the introduction of lizavanbulin into clinical medicine may give them hope for healing.
Article by C.D.Tiu et al. The potential utility of end-binding protein 1 (EB1) as a response-predictive biomarker for lisavanbulin: A phase 2 study of lisavanbulin (BAL101553) in adult patients with recurrent glioblastoma is published in the ASCO Meeting Library.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the Institute of Cancer Research: Early promise for first targeted brain cancer treatment.