Prognostic factors and survival in a prospective cohort of patients with high-grade glioma treated with carmustine wafers or temozolomide on an intention-to-treat basis

Local therapy in glioma: An evolving paradigm from history to horizons (Review)

Despite the implementation of multimodal treatments after surgery, glioblastoma (GBM) remains an incurable disease, posing a significant challenge in neuro-oncology. In this clinical setting, local therapy (LT), a developing paradigm, has received significant interest over time due to its potential to overcome the drawbacks of conventional therapy options for GBM. The present review aimed to trace the historical development, highlight contemporary advances and provide insights into the future horizons of LT in GBM management. In compliance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols criteria, a systematic review of the literature on the role of LT in GBM management was conducted. A total of 2,467 potentially relevant articles were found and, after removal of duplicates, 2,007 studies were screened by title and abstract (Cohen's κ coefficient=0.92). Overall, it emerged that 15, 10 and 6 clinical studies explored the clinical efficiency of intraoperative local treatment modalities, local radiotherapy and local immunotherapy, respectively. GBM recurrences occur within 2 cm of the radiation field in 80% of cases, emphasizing the significant influence of local factors on recurrence. This highlights the urgent requirement for LT strategies. In total, three primary reasons have thus led to the development of numerous LT solutions in recent decades: i) Intratumoral implants allow the blood-brain barrier to be bypassed, resulting in limited systemic toxicity; ii) LT facilitates bridging therapy between surgery and standard treatments; and iii) given the complexity of GBM, targeting multiple components of the tumor microenvironment through ligands specific to various elements could have a synergistic effect in treatments. Considering the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of GBM, the disease prognosis could be significantly improved by a combination of therapeutic strategies in the era of precision medicine.

Carmustine wafer implantation for high-grade gliomas: Evidence-based safety efficacy and practical recommendations from the Neuro-oncology Club of the French Society of Neurosurgery

There is a growing body of evidence that carmustine wafer implantation during surgery is an effective therapeutic adjunct to the standard combined radio-chemotherapy regimen using temozolomide in newly diagnosed and recurrent high-grade glioma patient management with a statistically significant survival benefit demonstrated across several randomized clinical trials, as well as prospective and retrospective studies (grade A recommendation). Compelling clinical data also support the safety of carmustine wafer implantation (grade A recommendation) in these patients and suggest that observed adverse events can be avoided in experienced neurosurgeon hands. Furthermore, carmustine wafer implantation does not seem to impact negatively on the quality of life and the completion of adjuvant oncological treatments (grade C recommendation). Moreover, emerging findings support the potential of high-grade gliomas molecular status, especially the O(6)-Methylguanine-DNA Methyltransferase promoter methylation status, in predicting the efficacy of such a surgical strategy, especially at recurrence (grade B recommendation). Finally, carmustine wafer implantation appears to be cost-effective in high-grade glioma patients when performed by an experienced team and when total or subtotal resection can be achieved. Altogether, these data underline the current need for a new randomized clinical trial to assess the impact of a maximal safe resection with carmustine wafer implantation followed by the standard combined chemoradiation protocol stratified by molecular status in high-grade glioma patients.

Age groups related glioblastoma study based on radiomics approach

Glioblastoma is the most aggressive malignant brain tumor with poor prognosis. Radiomics is a newly emerging and promising technique to reveal the complex relationships between high-throughput medical image features and deep information of disease including pathology, biomarkers and genomics. An approach was developed to investigate the internal relationship between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features and the age-related origins of glioblastomas based on a quantitative radiomics method. A fully automatic image segmentation method was applied to segment the tumor regions from three dimensional MRI images. 555 features were then extracted from the image data. By analyzing large numbers of quantitative image features, some predictive and prognostic information could be obtained by the radiomics approach. 96 patients diagnosed with glioblastoma pathologically have been divided into two age groups (<45 and ≥45 years old). As expected, there are 101 features showing the consistency with the age groups (T test, p < .05), and unsupervised clustering results of those features also show coherence with the age difference (T test, p= .006). In conclusion, glioblastoma in different age groups present different radiomics-feature patterns with statistical significance, which indicates that glioblastoma in different age groups should have different pathologic, protein, or genic origins.

Treatment Outcomes and Prognostic Factors in Adult Astrocytoma: In North East of Iran

Background

Astrocytomas are the most common primary adult brain tumors.

Objectives

In this study, we investigated the impact of some potential prognostic factors on survival in patients with low and high grade astrocytomas.

Patients and Methods

This retrospective cohort study was performed on patients with brain astrocytoma who were referred to oncology departments, Omid and Ghaem hospitals, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (2000 - 2011).

Results

415 patients with a median age of 43 and a male to female ratio of 252:163 (1.54) were recorded. Grade I to IV astrocytoma were found in 40 (9.6%), 88 (21.2%), 71 (17.1%) and 216 (52%) patients. With a median follow up time of 37 months for low grade and 13 months for high grade astrocytoma, the 5-year survival in grades I to IV was 92.1%, 69.1%, 49.2% and 9.6% respectively. In low grade astrocytomas, patients with grade I tumors, being ambulatory (5-year survival: 88% vs. 60.3%, P < 0.001) and performing optimal surgery (5-year survival 86% vs. 59.3%, P < 0.001) were associated with more favorable survival. In high grade astrocytomas, patients with grade III tumors, age < 50 (5-year survival 29.6% vs. 14.6%, P < 0.001), being ambulatory (5-year survival 39.4% vs. 10.5, P < 0.001), performing optimal surgery (5-year survival 46.1% vs. 4.3%, P < 0.001) and receiving chemotherapy (5-year survival 23.7% vs. 18.7%, P = 0.02) were associated with significantly higher overall survival.

Conclusions

Performing optimal surgery and good performance status were associated with more favorable survival in both low and high grade astrocytomas. In high grade a strocytomas, patients younger than 43 and those who received chemotherapy had better overall survival.

Metabolomic Screening of Tumor Tissue and Serum in Glioma Patients Reveals Diagnostic and Prognostic Information

Glioma grading and classification, today based on histological features, is not always easy to interpret and diagnosis partly relies on the personal experience of the neuropathologists. The most important feature of the classification is the aimed correlation between tumor grade and prognosis. However, in the clinical reality, large variations exist in the survival of patients concerning both glioblastomas and low-grade gliomas. Thus, there is a need for biomarkers for a more reliable classification of glioma tumors as well as for prognosis. We analyzed relative metabolite concentrations in serum samples from 96 fasting glioma patients and 81 corresponding tumor samples with different diagnosis (glioblastoma, oligodendroglioma) and grade (World Health Organization (WHO) grade II, III and IV) using gas chromatography-time of flight mass spectrometry (GC-TOFMS). The acquired data was analyzed and evaluated by pattern recognition based on chemometric bioinformatics tools. We detected feature patterns in the metabolomics data in both tumor and serum that distinguished glioblastomas from oligodendrogliomas (p(tumor) = 2.46 × 10(-8), p(serum) = 1.3 × 10(-5)) and oligodendroglioma grade II from oligodendroglioma grade III (p(tumor) = 0.01, p(serum) = 0.0008). Interestingly, we also found patterns in both tumor and serum with individual metabolite features that were both elevated and decreased in patients that lived long after being diagnosed with glioblastoma compared to those who died shortly after diagnosis (p(tum)(o)(r) = 0.006, p(serum) = 0.004; AUROCC(tumor) = 0.846 (0.647-1.000), AUROCC(serum) = 0.958 (0.870-1.000)). Metabolic patterns could also distinguish long and short survival in patients diagnosed with oligodendroglioma (p(tumor) = 0.01, p(serum) = 0.001; AUROCC(tumor) = 1 (1.000-1.000), AUROCC(serum) = 1 (1.000-1.000)). In summary, we found different metabolic feature patterns in tumor tissue and serum for glioma diagnosis, grade and survival, which indicates that, following further verification, metabolomic profiling of glioma tissue as well as serum may be a valuable tool in the search for latent biomarkers for future characterization of malignant glioma.

The role of Gliadel wafers in the treatment of newly diagnosed GBM: a meta-analysis

Background

Standard treatment for high-grade glioma (HGG) includes surgery followed by radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy. Insertion of carmustine wafers into the resection cavity as a treatment for malignant glioma is currently a controversial topic among neurosurgeons. Our meta-analysis focused on whether carmustine wafer treatment could significantly benefit the survival of patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).

Method

We searched the PubMed and Web of Science databases without any restrictions on language using the keywords “Gliadel wafers”, “carmustine wafers”, “BCNU wafers”, or “interstitial chemotherapy” in newly diagnosed GBM for the period from January 1990 to March 2015. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and cohort studies/clinical trials that compared treatments designed with and without carmustine wafers and which reported overall survival or hazard ratio (HR) or survival curves were included in this study. Moreover, the statistical analysis was conducted by the STATA 12.0 software.

Results

Six studies including two RCTs and four cohort studies, enrolling a total of 513 patients (223 with and 290 without carmustine wafers), matched the selection criteria. Carmustine wafers showed a strong advantage when pooling all the included studies (HR =0.63, 95% confidence interval (CI) =0.49–0.81; P=0.019). However, the two RCTs did not show a statistical increase in survival in the group with carmustine wafer compared to the group without it (HR =0.51, 95% CI =0.18–1.41; P=0.426), while the cohort studies demonstrated a significant survival increase (HR =0.59, 95% CI =0.44–0.79; P<0.0001).

Conclusion

Carmustine-impregnated wafers play a significant role in improving survival when used for patients with newly diagnosed GBM. More studies should be designed for newly diagnosed GBM in the future.

Survival outcomes and safety of carmustine wafers in the treatment of high-grade gliomas: a meta-analysis

Carmustine wafers (CW; Gliadel(®) wafers) are approved to treat newly-diagnosed high-grade glioma (HGG) and recurrent glioblastoma. Widespread use has been limited for several reasons, including concern that their use may preclude enrollment in subsequent clinical trials due to uncertainty about confounding of results and potential toxicities. This meta-analysis estimated survival following treatment with CW for HGG. A literature search identified relevant studies. Overall survival (OS), median survival, and adverse events (AEs) were summarized. Analysis of variance evaluated effects of treatment (CW vs non-CW) and diagnosis (new vs recurrent) on median survival. The analysis included 62 publications, which reported data for 60 studies (CW: n = 3,162; non-CW: n = 1,736). For newly-diagnosed HGG, 1-year OS was 67 % with CW and 48 % without; 2-year OS was 26 and 15 %, respectively; median survival was 16.4 ± 21.6 months and 13.1 ± 29.9 months, respectively. For recurrent HGG, 1-year OS was 37 % with CW and 34 % without; 2-year OS was 15 and 12 %, respectively; median survival was 9.7 ± 20.9 months and 8.6 ± 22.6 months, respectively. Effects of treatment (longer median survival with CW than without; P = 0.043) and diagnosis (longer median survival for newly-diagnosed HGG than recurrent; P < 0.001) on median survival were significant, with no significant treatment-by-diagnosis interaction (P = 0.620). The most common AE associated with wafer removal was surgical site infection (SSI); the most common AEs for repeat surgery were mass effect, SSI, hydrocephalus, cysts in resection cavity, acute hematoma, wound healing complications, and brain necrosis. These data may be useful in the context of utilizing CW in HGG management, and in designing future clinical trials to allow CW-treated patients to participate in experimental protocols.

Safety and efficacy of concomitant chemotherapeutic wafers and iodine-125 seeds for recurrent glioblastoma

Background:

Patients with recurrent malignant gliomas have a uniformly poor prognosis. However, further treatment is often warranted at the time of recurrence. Low-activity implanted brachytherapeutic devices, such as iodine-125 seeds, and implantable chemotherapeutic devices such as 1, 3-bis (2-chloroethyl)-nitrosourea (BCNU) impregnated polymer wafers (Gliadel^®) have been shown to be safe and modestly effective, but a comparison of combination therapy versus Gliadel^® implantation alone has not been performed.

Methods:

We retrospectively examined 24 patients following re-resection of recurrent glioblastoma, with 17 patients undergoing implantation of both Gliadel^® and iodine-125 seeds, and 7 patients undergoing implantation of Gliadel^® only. Outcomes examined included adverse events, survival after re-resection (SAR), and time to tumor progression after re-resection (PAR).

Results:

Implantation of both Gliadel^® and low activity iodine-125 seeds is safe with only two wound infections noted, a complication rate comparable to previous reports. The combination appears to confer a median SAR benefit if the activity per tumor resection volume exceeds 0.8 mCi/mL (60 versus 31 weeks, P = 0.02), and this benefit remained significant on multivariate analysis (HR =0.26 [CI:0.07-0.93], P = 0.03). Gross total resection of tumor was also significantly associated with longer time to PAR (HR =5.4 [CI: 1.13-26.0], P = 0.03).

Conclusions:

The concomitant use of Gliadel^® and low activity iodine-125 seeds following re-resection of recurrent glioblastoma is safe. Our study demonstrated a significant benefit in SAR if the iodine-125 activity per tumor volume is greater than 0.8 mCi/mL. While our sample size is small, our results are in agreement with previous studies demonstrating the efficacy of combination treatment.