Wednesday 28 June 2017

PVS-RIPO with/without Lomustine

Hey all,

My wife is about 3 months shy of 3 years since diagnosis/surgery.  So far, she has not had a recurrence (we attribute that to this amazing community and a spectacular NO - although I'm sure tumor genetics is also driving that).  Yesterday, however, she had her 3-month scan and a new area of enhancement is showing.  Our NO is floating the possibility that this could be effects of radiation, but we have to go back in a month for another MRI to find out for sure.

That said, I am evaluating all of the clinical trials for recurrence in case we need to act quickly.  The first one I looked into is the PVS-RIPO (poliovirus) trial at Duke.  The Phase I trial closed (yesterday actually - it says June 27, 2017).  But it seems a new trial is now open - a Phase II trial that is randomized.  Every patient receives PVS-RIPO, but half of the patients also receive one single dose of Lomustine 8 weeks after the injection.

Does anybody know anything about this trial, or have any reasoning behind the addition of Lomustine?  I'm thrilled to see that this trial essentially overlaps with the Phase I trial, but I've never heard mention of adding a single dose of Lomustine.

Thank you all, and best wishes to everybody.

Kendall

1 comment:

  1. I can only speculate, but my thought is they want to find out if lomustine, a typical treatment for GBM recurrence, might improve upon polio-rhinovirus alone. There was reference in the 60 minutes special about the poliovirus treatment having chemosensitizing effects. I'm guessing the timing of the chemo treatment is designed to be far enough away from the PVS-RIPO infusion so as not to interfere with the initial immune response to the virus (given the toxicity of lomustine to white blood cells).

    I hope the new enhancement is indeed treatment effect.

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