The Importance of Combination Immune Therapy in Orthotopic Murine Glioblastoma

Connor Liu, medical student, Washington University School of Medicine, discusses the importance of combination immunotherapy in orthotopic murine glioblastoma.

With a historically aggressive and treatment-resistant cancer like glioblastoma, a combination modality is necessary, says Liu. Firstly, it is important to understand how new immunotherapy options, such as checkpoint blockade, adoptive cell transfer, and neoadjuvant vaccines, assist in attacking tumor cells. Secondly, understanding how said treatments react on a biological and immunological level with current standard-of-care therapies, such as surgical resection, multivalent neoantigen vaccinations, and chemotherapy, is essential. Understanding the biology can offer insights on how to treat a patient with glioblastoma while using the various agents that are available.

There is also a need for a better understanding of how these combination treatments are going to interact together and how to best use the options currently available to produce the best benefit for patients, concludes Liu.