MEDICAL RESEARCH UC hosting trial for new brain tumor immunotherapy that works like vaccine

CINCINNATI — UC Health is testing a groundbreaking new cancer therapy to fight deadly brain tumors.

The university is a study site for a new Phase 2b clinical trial testing a personalized immunotherapy approach to fighting glioblastoma (GBM). GBMs are fast-growing and aggressive brain tumors with only a 40% survival rate in the first year after diagnosis, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons reports.

The personalized immunotherapy, UC said, works like a vaccine. The therapy is created from the patient’s own brain cancer cells and implanted into the patient’s stomach. It is then removed two days later, when the immune system has a chance to train itself to fight the tumor.

“This is definitely the future of fighting cancer, is taking each person, because we know individuals vary and individuals’ chances vary,” said Dr. Soma Sengupta, site principal investigator and a UC Cancer Center physician-researcher. “So to create something that’s unique to the individual is huge.”

During the trial, patients will receive the new therapy after undergoing brain tumor neurosurgery. Once the therapy is removed, they’ll continue their standard care of outpatient chemotherapy and radiation.

“Survival with that standard of care with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy is about two years, and this therapy has the promise of extending survival beyond that,” Sengupta said.

A total of 93 patients across up to 25 sites will be enrolled in the trial, with up to 14 patients expected to enroll at UC. Patients must be newly diagnosed and cannot have had surgery to be eligible.