Pennsylvania Medical Center Gives Hope to Patients with Glioblastoma

Recently, the medical complex of the University of Pennsylvania opened an innovative research institute at its own cancer center, which will focus on studying glioblastoma multiforme, one of the most common and deadly forms of brain cancer. Its team intends to explore the possibilities of immunotherapy for treating glioblastoma, specifically developing and testing the latest varieties of CAR T-cell therapy.

The latter involves introducing the patient's own modified T-lymphocytes, responsible for the immune response, with chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) attached to them through genetic engineering, which enables them to recognize and attack cancer cells. CAR T-cell therapy, which became the first type of gene therapy for cancer, was developed at the Penn Medicine center last year and is the first type of personalized cell therapy for oncological diseases approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The American Society of Clinical Oncology recognized it as the major achievement of the year last month.

Each year, glioblastoma is diagnosed in nearly 15,000 people, with an average survival of 15 months from the time of diagnosis. One of its recent and most well-known victims was Senator John McCain, who died 13 months after the tumour was discovered. The University of Pennsylvania Medical Center is at the forefront of the fight against this and other deadly forms of cancer.

“The Penn University Medical Center is at the forefront of studying and treating glioblastoma, and our new research center will be an invaluable assistant in this critically important work,” says Dr. Donald O’Rourke, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “Immunotherapy provides a radically new approach to treating aggressive forms of oncology, and our medical center is currently the only institute in the U.S. researching a combined method that integrates CAR T-cell therapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors (molecules through which cancer cells suppress the immune response) for the effective treatment of glioblastoma.”

The new research institute, born from the partnership of the Abramson Cancer Center and the Department of Neurosurgery, has brought together a multidisciplinary team, including researchers from the departments of pathology and laboratory medicine, systemic pharmacology and translational medicine, neurosurgery, radiation oncology, as well as the pathobiology department of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

In addition to new ways to fight cancer, such as immunotherapy, the Abramson Cancer Center and the Pennsylvania Brain Tumor Center have a wide range of other treatment methods for glioblastoma, both pharmacological and surgical. These include more traditional forms of oncotherapy, such as radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and surgical intervention, as well as innovative proton therapy and TumorGlow technology.

“Revolutionary discoveries are happening in immunotherapy,” says Dr. Sean Grady, head of the Department of Neurosurgery. “Finding an effective treatment will not be easy; there’s no way around it. But in my 32 years as a neurosurgeon, I have finally believed that one day we will be able to defeat brain cancer.”