How immunotherapies are targeting the glioblastoma immune environment.

The diagnosis of glioblastoma remains one of the most dismal in medical practice, with current standard care only providing a median survival of 14.6 months. The need for new therapies is desperately clear.

Is neuroglial antigen 2 a potential contributor to cilengitide response in glioblastoma?

Background: Determining the expression levels of neuroglial antigen 2 (NG2) in glioma cell lines and to evaluate the potential contribution of NG2 to cilengitide response were aimed.

Materials And Methods: Endogenous expression level of NG2 was determined using quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and immunoblotting. Cilengitide responses of the cells were monitored to determine half maximal inhibitory concentration values.

Current progress for the use of miRNAs in glioblastoma treatment.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a highly aggressive brain cancer with the worst prognosis of any central nervous system disease despite intensive multimodal therapy. Inevitably, glioblastoma is fatal, with recurrence of treatment-resistant tumour growth at distal sites leading to an extremely low median survival rate of 12-15 months from the time of initial diagnosis. With the advent of microarray and gene profiling technology, researchers have investigated trends in genetic alterations and, in this regard, the role of dysregulated microRNAs (highly conserved endogenous small RNA molecules) in glioblastoma has been studied with a view to identifying novel mechanisms of acquired drug resistance and allow for development of microRNA (miRNA)-based therapeutics for GBM patients.