Glioblastoma: Pitfalls and Opportunities of Immunotherapeutic Combinations

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common and aggressive primary central nervous system tumour in adults. It has extremely poor prognosis since the current standard of care, comprising of gross total resection and temozolomide (TMZ) chemoradiotherapy, prolongs survival, but does not provide a durable response. To a certain extent, this is due to GBM???s heterogeneous, hostile and cold tumour microenvironment (TME) and the unique ability of GBM to overcome the host???s immune responses. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop more effective therapeutic approaches. This review provides critical insights from completed and ongoing clinical studies investigating novel immunotherapy strategies for GBM patients, ranging from the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in different settings of GBM treatment to novel combinatorial therapies. In particular, we discuss how treatment regimens based on single antigen peptide vaccines evolved into fully personalised, polyvalent cell-based vaccines, CAR-T cell, and viral or gene therapies. Furthermore, the results of the most influential clinical trials and a selection of innovative preclinical studies aimed at activating the immunologically cold GBM microenvironment are reviewed.

Automated summary

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common and aggressive primary central nervous system tumour in adults. The current standard of care for GBM, including surgery and chemoradiotherapy, is not effective in providing a durable response due to the heterogeneous and immune-escaping nature of GBM. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop more effective therapeutic approaches, such as immunotherapy.