The Foundation is excited to share a final update from Prof. Helen Rizos, who leads the Precision Cancer Therapy research team and is the Principal Investigator of the Macquarie University Cancer Biobank at Macquarie University.
Prof. Rizos’s research involved analysing glioblastoma tumours that have been removed in surgery, for immune markers that will identify the patients likely to respond to immunotherapy treatments. Prof. Rizos’s research is funded by the Foundation through a 2019 Innovation Grant valued at $200,000.
Success needed for glioblastoma
Immune checkpoint inhibitors work by blocking proteins that stop the immune system from attacking cancer cells. They have revolutionised the treatment of many cancers, including melanoma, but clinical trials in patients with recurrent glioblastoma have been disappointing.
This study confirms that glioblastomas have many features associated with and required for response to immune checkpoint inhibitors. For instance, immune cells infiltrate glioblastoma, and glioblastoma cells express molecules that enable immune cell recognition and activation. Thus, glioblastomas have many of the features required to respond to immune checkpoint therapies. Prof. Rizos and her team also identified several markers that act to limit immune activation, and targeting these repressive markers may offer new avenues for the treatment of patients with glioblastoma.
Data-driven treatment offers hope
This work has important implications for people living with brain cancer. Although patient responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors have been disappointing, these therapies have often been used on disease recurrence, after patients have received radio and chemotherapy. The data generated suggests that careful selection of clinically available immune checkpoint inhibitors and earlier use of these therapies may prove beneficial in glioblastoma – which has many features of immunotherapy-responsive tumours.
“The opportunity to compare brain melanoma metastases with glioblastomas would not have been possible without Cure Brain Cancer Foundation funding. We had an exciting research proposal, but no record of glioblastoma research and with limited preliminary data. The Cure Brain Cancer Foundation enabled a new area of research, and the outcomes are novel and translational.”
Prof. Helen Rizos
Macquarie University Cancer Biobank
"We are truly grateful to Prof. Rizos and her team for the amazing insights their project has uncovered. I have no doubt that we are taking steps in the right direction to harness the power of immunotherapy and offer new avenues of treatment for patients with GBM."
Dr. Hamza Anwer
Head of Research, Cure Brain Cancer Foundation
