Conventional chemotherapy combined with molecularly targeted drugs: How to treat recurrent glioblastoma?

  High-grade gliomas account for 75% of primary malignant brain tumors, and glioblastoma (GBM) accounts for more than half of high-grade gliomas. The median progression-free survival time for newly diagnosed GBM is only 6.9 months, and more than 70% of patients relapse at one year, even with the latest Stupp regimen (6 weeks of postoperative temozolomide with concurrent radiotherapy and 5 days of temozolomide with adjuvant chemotherapy) standard treatment since 2005. The lack of effective chemotherapy regimens for recurrent GBM is a clinical challenge.  Molecular targeted therapy is a treatment targeting specific abnormal molecules of tumors. Compared with traditional cytotoxic chemotherapy, molecular targeted therapy has specificity, selectivity, and relatively low toxic side effects, and has shown certain superiority. However, due to the complexity of molecular signaling pathways in tumor cells and the interaction between different pathways, the role of single molecular targeted drugs in treating brain tumors is limited. The combination of molecular targeted drugs and traditional (cytotoxic) chemotherapy will be the key to improve the efficacy.  We investigated the clinical efficacy of conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy combined with molecularly targeted drugs in the treatment of recurrent glioblastoma. The cases studied were all patients with refractory recurrent glioblastoma who had severe recurrence after failure of radiotherapy and temozolomide treatment and multiple focal spreads. Preliminary results showed good efficacy compared to historical controls for other treatments, with a median survival time of 8.6 months for patients (study paper published, see below).  The organic combination of molecular targeted therapy and conventional (cytotoxic) chemotherapy will certainly play an active role in the treatment of malignant brain tumors.