Brain cancer drug raises prospect of first targeted treatment

Patients with the deadliest forms of cancer have been offered hope after a new drug was found to shrink tumours by more than 90 per cent.

The average survival time after a diagnosis of brain cancer is 12 to 18 months. Picture: iStock

Patients with the deadliest forms of cancer have been offered hope after a new drug was found to shrink tumours by more than 90 per cent, raising the prospect of the first targeted treatment for brain cancer.

The breakthrough may be one of the greatest advances in treating the disease for decades, giving precious time to thousands of patients whose existing treatment options are few. Trial data could herald a “new era of personalised medicine”, doctors have said.

Glioblastomas are the most common type of high-grade primary brain tumour and the most dangerous. They grow fast and have threadlike tendrils that extend into other parts of the brain.

They are likely to spread and may come back, even if intensively treated. The tumours can mutate at such a rapid rate that treatments cannot keep up.

The average survival time after diagnosis is 12 to 18 months, and only 25 per cent of glioblastoma patients survive beyond a year.

After years of research, doctors hope lisavanbulin, a drug being trialled on British patients, will become the first targeted brain cancer treatment. Their optimism follows “encouraging” early results from a trial being led by the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and the Institute of Cancer Research in London.

The news comes days after Australian biotech company Patrys announced it had worked with US researchers to develop a tumour-targeting autoantibody that had been shown in animals to significantly inhibit the growth of tumours in three models of cancer, including brain and breast.

An international phase two study has begun and centres across Britain, Switzerland and Germany are recruiting patients.