Drug or Vaccine?

Abstract

Malignant gliomas are the most common and aggressive form of brain tumour. Current combinations of aggressive surgical resection, radiation therapy and chemotherapy regimens do not significantly improve long-term patient survival for these cancers. Therefore, investigative therapies including tumour vaccines have targeted this devastating condition. This article reviews evidence and data on chemotherapy and immunotherapy for a personalized medicine approach in order to enable physicians to select the appropriate treatment for glioma patients. Dendritic cell- and peptide-based therapy for gliomas seems to be safe and without major adverse effects. Gene-modified vaccines have also shown promise in the treatment of malignant gliomas. The concept of 'personalized medicine' is currently important in oncology treatment development. Using a personalized medicine approach, it may be necessary to evaluate the molecular genetic abnormalities in individual patient tumours, and such findings should be the mainstay of immunotherapeutic strategies designed for the individual patient.

Rottlerin inhibits cell growth and invasion via down-regulation of Cdc20 in glioma cells

“…Surgery is often difficult to remove entire brain tumor and chemotherapeutic drugs cannot pass the blood-brain barrier [5]. Therefore, current combinations of surgical resection, radiation therapy and chemotherapy regimens fail to significantly improve long-term patient survival for these brain cancers [6]. Thus, it is pivotal to discover the new therapeutic agents for the treatment of glioma.…”

Efficacy and Safety of Vaccines After Conventional Treatments for Survival of Gliomas: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…Based on our knowledge, the present meta-analysis is the first one which evaluates the effectiveness of various types of vaccines against gliomas. Although it has been mentioned that immunotherapy using vaccines is an effective method for gliomas, there are still uncertainties about their efficacy and advantages above conventional treatments [17]. Previous reviews have discussed the efficacy of glioma vaccines in terms of immune responses and cytotoxicity and the need for longer terms of assessments and larger populations are emphasized [29].…”

“…The use of other types of vaccines such as tumor initiating cell, B Cell Hybridoma, autologous formalin fixed vaccines, etc., has been suggested for treatment of gliomas [12][13][14][15][16]. On the other hand, personalized vaccines including modified genes are considered as the novel treatment which trigger genetic variations in individuals with malignant glioma [17]. These vaccines are manufactured using the genetics and epigenetics information of subjects and it is aimed to increase OS and PFS rate in glioma patients more than conventional methods of treatment and non-personalized vaccines [18].…”