The Swedish Neuroscience Institute Ivy Center for Advanced Brain Tumor treatment in Seattle is a comprehensive clinical and research program focused on novel cutting edge treatments for malignant brain tumors. Clinical trials are now in progress to use focused ultrasound technology to treat neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor, as well as brain cancer and other cancers. (Focused ultrasound is currently an FDA-approved treatment for uterine fibroids.) There are several projects ongoing in this center that are potentially revolutionary. First, Dr. Cobbs and his team discovered that a virus called cytomegalovirus is strongly associated with malignant brain tumors. Antiviral drug treatments are showing preliminarily groundbreaking results in terms of extending survival for these tumor patients. Working with Dr. Cobbs, international investigators from Duke University and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Sweden are extending clinical trials based on Dr. Cobbs’ work. An international clinical trial for glioblastoma with the antiviral drug Valcyte is in the planning stages. Another major focus of the group, initially funded by the Ivy Foundation, involves the first ever in humans clinical trial using high throughput screening of hundreds of FDA approved drugs to identify personalized treatment for an individual patient with glioblastoma. Currently we have enrolled 5 of 10 patients in this clinical trial. We are working closely with Dr. Leroy Hood at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and his group to understand the molecular genetics of the tumors being treated and has the ability to reverse engineer the therapeutic responses for any given patient so that we will be able, and the future, to develop highly effective, personalized combination drug cocktails for any patient based on their tumor genetics. Thirdly, in another project in collaboration with the Institute for Systems Biology, we have developed blood biomarkers that trend positively and negatively with glioblastoma tumor burden in the patient. These blood based biomarkers may revolutionized our ability to follow-up patient’s response to radiation and chemotherapy and other treatment modalities, especially since the current gold standard, MRI, is fraught with many problems in terms of reliability. The group is also currently working with international leaders to develop a personalized cancer stem cell based immunotherapy program for glioblastoma. We are in the planning stages of implementing this in a clinical trial, which will be the first personalized glioblastoma cancer stem cell-based immunotherapy trial in the US. Finally, the group at SNI has begun the planning stages of a comprehensive brain tumor program that could be implemented throughout the Providence healthcare system of 3 million patients. This comprehensive approach would utilize high throughput drug screening and genomic analysis of patients’ tumors, with intensive systems biology genomics analytics, with the ultimate goal of developing a protocol to design an individual patients combination therapy based on their own tumor genome. We see this integrated systems biology approach as the future of cancer therapy not only for glioblastoma but for other human malignancies as well. In order to implement this, only a proactive health care system such as Providence healthcare which has the broad reach and integration over millions of patients is capable of achieving this goal. We are seeking funds to implement this moonshot strategy and we expect that it will cost tens of millions of dollars to beta test our project in glioblastoma patients. If we are successful in these patients, the strategy could be rapidly scaled up to almost all cancer patients. It is expected that this type of combinatorial, personalized, high throughput drug screening and genome based strategy will continue to evolve and the become feasible at a much lower price over time. Ultimately we believe this personalized type of strategy will improve cancer survival for millions of patients while dramatically decreasing the cost of cancer therapy.
http://www.newsweek.com/cancer-there-brain-tumor-virus-77933