Open AccessNovel Drug Delivery Strategies in Neuro-Oncology
Author(s) -
Dani S. Bidros,
Michael A. Vogelbaum
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
neurotherapeutics
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1933-7213
pISSN - 1878-7479
DOI - 10.1016/j.nurt.2009.04.004
Subject(s) - medicine , neurosurgery , clinical trial , blood–brain barrier , glioblastoma , neurology , chemotherapy , drug delivery , brain tumor , oncology , glioma , drug , radiation therapy , surgery , pharmacology , pathology , central nervous system , cancer research , chemistry , organic chemistry , psychiatry
Treatment of malignant gliomas represents one of the most formidable challenges in oncology. Despite treatment with surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, the prognosis remains poor, particularly for glioblastoma, which has a median survival of 12 to 15 months. An important impediment to finding effective treatments for malignant gliomas is the presence of the blood brain barrier, which serves to prevent delivery of potentially active therapeutic compounds. Multiple efforts are focused on developing strategies to effectively deliver active drugs to brain tumor cells. Blood brain barrier disruption and convection-enhanced delivery have emerged as leading investigational delivery techniques for the treatment of malignant brain tumors. Clinical trials using these methods have been completed, with mixed results, and several more are being initiated. In this review, we describe the clinically available methods used to circumvent the blood brain barrier and summarize the results to date of ongoing and completed clinical trials.