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In Spain, researchers at the University Clinic of Navarre have found a promising treatment for infiltrating brainstem glioma, a tumor that kills thousands of children every year.
For the first time in the world, patients with brainstem glioma – a rare but aggressive tumor – have been treated with an oncolytic virus. The results of this trial were published in the latest issue of New England Journal of Medicine.
Glioma: a promising new treatment for children
Invasive brainstem glioma (GITC) is a malignant tumor affecting young children, mainly 5 to 10 years old. Very aggressive, it is localized in a part of the brainstem, located under the brain.
In France, nearly 50 children are affected each year by this disease, the prognosis of which is grim: it cannot be operated on without damaging vital nerve functions.
In an attempt to eradicate this tumour, Spanish researchers carried out a small clinical trial, relating to antitumor virotherapy, with 12 patients aged 3 to 18 years.
The oncolytic virus used in the clinical trial is an adenovirus, genetically modified so that it can only selectively infect, replicate and kill tumor cells. In addition to this direct effect on tumor cells, the oncolytic virus exerts another antitumor effect by enhancing the action of the patient’s immune system against the tumor.
“Our results are promising because they show that virotherapy can be an additional treatment route for this disease completely devoid of effective therapies.“, revealed Jaime Gállego, neurologist at the University Clinic of Navarre and co-author of the study.
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No serious side effects have been reported
The scientists point out that no serious side effects were reported during the trial after injecting the oncolytic viruses into the tumor and that the process was well tolerated by the children.
“A few days after the operation, the patients were discharged from the hospital and began to be treated with radiotherapy in their respective centers. As this is a phase I trial conducted on a very small number of patients, we cannot draw firm conclusions on the effectiveness of the treatment, although it is true that most patients had a longer survival than expected, an encouraging result that encourages us to continue exploring this therapeutic alternative” says Dr. Marta Alonso, director of the Laboratory of Advanced Therapies for Pediatric Solid Tumors of Cima and the University Clinic of Navarre.
The results of the study were indeed rather conclusive: this “virotherapy” technique, when combined with radiotherapy, increases the average life expectancy of the participants, which thus goes from 12 months to 17.8 months.
Three years after the appearance of the tumour, two of the child volunteers who received the treatment are still alive.
“This may seem like little progress, little time gained from the disease, but it is a decisive step forward.“, concluded Jaime Gállego in the scientific journal.