Testing an Innovative Approach to Fighting Brain Tumors
Lars Wagner,
MD
Pediatric Hematologist / Oncologist and Principal Investigator,
Brain Tumor Gene Therapy Trial
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If we push the survival rate up to 50
percent, that would be a big victory.
- Lars
Wagner, MD |
 |
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More kids die from brain tumors today than
from leukemia.
- Lars
Wagner, MD |
I was a general pediatrician for four years, and I enjoyed that,
but a desire to contribute more by taking care of kids with serious
illnesses drew me to pediatric oncology. This is an incredible
field, and it's such a privilege to be able to work with these
families.
I was attracted to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
because there's a lot of opportunity to do meaningful research
here.
Brain tumors are one of my areas of focus. More kids die from
brain tumors today than from leukemia, which used to be the number
one killer. This is because we're improving in leukemia, but we're
not making comparable, meaningful progress in brain tumor
treatments — not fast enough for our patients.
I'm the clinical director for our brain tumor gene therapy
study. I like to think we're trying to put out a fire, which is the
cancer, and it takes a whole line of people to draw the water and
pass the buckets to eventually douse the fire. The lab researchers
are at one end, coming up with good ideas, and I'm way over on the
other end, where we're dousing the fire. But every stage is
critically important.
We're focusing on a type of brain tumor called high-grade
glioma, which makes up about one-third of all pediatric brain
tumors. In adults they're even more common. These tumors have a
really poor prognosis. Fewer than one-third of all children with
high-grade gliomas survive for five years, so this is an area that
needs attention.
The best available treatment combines two drugs: temozolomide
and BG. The tumor cells are resistant to temozolomide, so we give
it with BG, which makes the tumor cells more sensitive. But BG also
makes normal blood cells more sensitive. We're trying to protect
the blood cells by giving them the gene that drives resistance.
Then we could give higher doses of temozolomide to kill the
cancer cells without killing normal blood cells.
We're very hopeful this will work, and our studies so far
indicate it may be a pretty safe approach.
Ultimately this may not be the cure-all, and we're very
realistic about this, but this approach is a great way to maximize
existing therapies. If we push the survival rate up to 50 percent,
that would be a big victory.
