Anti-angiogenic therapy in glioblastoma multiforme

Abstract

Author(s): Paulina Kozakiewicz

Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common brain malignan-cy in adults. It is also highly aggressive and characterized by very poor prognosis. Surgical resection of the tumor remains the basic treatment that significantly improves survival. Moreover, adjuvant chemoradiotherapy is the standard-of-care. Glioblastoma multiforme has a very complex genetic profile; various genetic abnormalities have been discovered in cells of this type of tumor. Despite growing interest in tar-geted therapies in oncology, no breakthrough offering suc-cessful treatment of glioblastoma multiforme has occurred. Owing to the tumor’s rich vasculature, antiangiogentic the-rapies seem promising. An association between carcinogene-sis and tumor vasculature was observed in 1970s. At present, the only FDA-approved drug targeting antiogenesis-stimula-ting factor is bevacizumab. In recent years, more and more new antiangiogenic therapies have been investigated in both monotherapy and combined treatment of glioblastoma mul-tiforme with different success rates. This article presents an overview of the most explored therapies.

Share this article