Dr Blanco on Unmet Needs for Pediatric Patients With Relapsed Brain Tumors

Jezabel Rodriguez-Blanco, PhD, assistant professor, Pediatrics, Darby Children’s Research Institute, Hollings Cancer Center, University of South Carolina, discusses unmet needs for pediatric patients with relapsed brain tumors, including the need for additional treatment approaches for these patients.

During the 2023 AACR Annual Meeting, Rodriguez-Blanco spoke on the mechanistic insights of brain tumor relapse. Although approximately 70% of pediatric patients with brain tumors will successfully be treated, around 30% of patients will relapse, Rodriguez-Blanco begins. Additionally, there are currently no treatments available to successfully treat patients with a relapsed brain tumor, Rodriguez-Blanco notes, adding that following progression, these patients are generally enrolled in clinical trials in the hopes of finding an efficacious treatment.

This lack of options available for pediatric patients who have progressed on standard-of-care treatment creates an unmet need to conduct more research into this disease state, Rodriguez-Blanco continues, noting that this is what investigators are attempting to do within the lab setting. Since primary tumors and relapsed tumors do not present in the same way, developing specific treatment approaches for patients in this setting is important, she says.

These differences in presentation between relapsed tumors and primary tumors are the main reason why patients who progress do not respond to the same treatment in the next line, Rodriguez-Blanco explains. Additional research has shown that the mutations found in the primary disease are not the same mutations as those found in relapsed disease, Rodriguez-Blanco concludes.