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Novel Immunotherapeutic Approaches for the Treatment of Glioblastoma

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Abstract

Glioblastoma is highly aggressive and remains difficult to treat despite being the most common malignant primary brain tumor in adults. Current standard-of-care treatment calls for maximum resection of the tumor mass followed by concurrent chemotherapy and radiotherapy and further adjuvant chemotherapy if necessary. Despite this regimen, prognosis remains grim. Immunotherapy has shown promising success in a variety of solid tumor types, but efficacy in glioblastoma is yet to be demonstrated. Barriers to the success of immunotherapy in glioblastoma include: a heterogeneous tumor cell population, a highly immunosuppressive microenvironment, and the blood–brain barrier, to name a few. Several immunotherapeutic approaches are actively being investigated and developed to overcome these limitations. In this review, we present different classes of immunotherapy targeting glioblastoma, their most recent results, and potential future directions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, Duke University Medical Center, Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke, Durham, NC, USA

    Saïf Eddine Zaidi, Eliese Moelker, Kirit Singh, Aditya Mohan, Miguel A. Salgado, Kelly Hotchkiss, Steven Shen, John Sampson & Mustafa Khasraw

  2. School of Medicine, University of Paris Cité, Paris, France

    Saïf Eddine Zaidi

  3. Department of Neurosurgery, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA

    Muhammed Amir Essibayi

  4. Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

    Muhammed Amir Essibayi

  5. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    William Lee

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  1. Saïf Eddine Zaidi
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Correspondence to Mustafa Khasraw.

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Conflict of interest

JHS has an equity interest in Istari Oncology, which has licensed intellectual property from Duke related to the use of poliovirus and D2C7 in the treatment of glioblastoma. JHS is an inventor on patents related to the PEP-CMV DC vaccine with tetanus, as well as the poliovirus vaccine and D2C7 in the treatment of glioblastoma. JHS has an equity interest in Annias Immunotherapeutics, which has licensed intellectual property from Duke related to the use of the pepCMV vaccine in the treatment of glioblastoma. MK reports research funding from the institutions: BMS, AbbVie, Daiichi Sankyo, BioNTech, Celldex, Astellas, and CNS Pharmaceuticals and honoraria from JAX lab for genomic research, Johnson and Johnson, Voyager Therapeutics, and George Clinical. SEZ, EM, KS, AM, MS, MAS, KH, SS, and WL have no conflicts of interest that are directly relevant to the content of this article.

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Authors’ contributions

MK and WL conceptualized and designed the work, SEZ wrote the original draft and revised it, MK, EM, and KS edited and improved the first version of the manuscript, and AM, MS, MAS, KH, SS, WL, JHS, and MK subsequently revised the manuscript. SEZ and AM developed the figures, which were revised with input from all authors. MK supervised and proposed methodology, all authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

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Zaidi, S.E., Moelker, E., Singh, K. et al. Novel Immunotherapeutic Approaches for the Treatment of Glioblastoma. BioDrugs 37, 489–503 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40259-023-00598-2

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