Turning a promising idea in the lab into an actual clinical trial for patients is one of the hardest and most important steps in cancer research. It’s a gap the American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) exists to help close through its array of research grant programs.
Dr. Gary Kohanbash, an Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery and Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh, received a 2020 ABTA Discovery Grant, funded through a collaboration with the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation, to pursue a bold new approach that could make immunotherapy more effective. That early ABTA investment has since helped carry his research from a high-risk idea in the lab all the way to a clinical trial, now preparing to open for Glioblastoma (GBM) patients.
The ABTA invests in Discovery Grants for this exact reason, as many promising ideas are too early-stage to receive a large, multi-year grant, but with this initial support, these ideas can grow into studies that can ultimately save lives.
GBM is notoriously difficult to treat, with therapies generally offering only moderate or short-term effects in the clinic. Immunotherapies have shown real promise against other cancers, and even certain brain metastases, but glioblastomas have a remarkable ability to evade the immune system, even when immunotherapy is incorporated.
Glioblastomas can turn the body’s immune cells into bad actors that create a more favorable environment for the tumor to grow. These “tumor-promoting immune cells” help the tumor evade the immune system and reduce the tumor-fighting effects of checkpoint inhibitors, a type of immunotherapy. Dr. Kohanbash thought that eliminating the tumor-promoting immune cells from the tumor could make other immunotherapies more effective.
After his novel treatment strategy showed promising results in the lab, Kohanbash collaborated with Dr. Megan Mantica, a neurooncologist at the University of Pittsburgh and the National Cancer Institute, and many others to advance this therapy to a clinical trial for GBM patients. The team credits the ABTA as the “first funder” of this research and stated that, “this was a very high-risk idea at the time for something that had never been tested before.”
This novel therapy is a radiopharmaceutical called Actimab-A, which can identify and bind to the tumor-promoting immune cells and deliver a precise dose of radiation to eliminate them. In the clinical trial, which will open later this year, Actimab-A will be combined with checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy. The hope is that with the bad actors eliminated, the checkpoint immunotherapy will be able to do its job to boost the patients’ immune response against the tumor.
If this trial is successful, this new therapy could help establish a new way of treating GBM by targeting the immunosuppressive, tumor-promoting immune cells. Kohanbash emphasizes that there is real movement in the search for a cure for glioblastoma, and this trial could be a gamechanger in the field.
“This trial represents a dramatically new approach, not simply an incremental improvement on existing treatments,” he says. “We want patients and families to know that we will continue to consider every possible strategy to find more effective treatments for GBM, and ultimately a cure. We feel the urgency of this work every day, knowing that patients and families are depending on research and that every day counts.”
The ABTA invests in Discovery Grants for this exact reason, as many promising ideas are too early-stage to receive a large, multi-year grant, but with this initial support, these ideas can grow into studies that can ultimately save lives.
To learn more about our research program, visit: https://www.abta.org/research/
