Dual therapy proven to improve survival in patients with glioma

Following radiation therapy with chemotherapy has now been shown to prolong survival for glioma patients. Results of the study were announced Feb. 3 by the National Institutes of Health.

The objective of the study was to assess the value of chemotherapy in addition to conventional radiation treatment. The clinical trial is titled RTOG 9802 and includes 251 high risk subjects with known low-grade gliomas recruited between October 1998 and June 2002. Patients were considered high risk because they were over the age of 40 and had already undergone unsuccessful surgery to remove all of their cancer.

Half of the patients received a combination of procarbazine, CCNU or generically lomustine and and vincristine, all currently approved for clinical use. Patients were administered the combination for 21 days and the dose was repeated in six cycles every eight weeks. The other half of the study population ended treatment after radiation therapy and did not receive additional chemo.

Radiation and PCV chemo, as it is called, has now been shown to lead to 13.3 years median survival compared to 7.8 years median for those who received only radiation treatment with a median follow up of 12 years.

“The results of this study are practice-changing,” said Jan Buckner, MD, co-investigator in the trial and professor of oncology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “Additionally, ongoing analysis of patient tumor samples should allow us to further identify the patients who will, and who will not, benefit from chemotherapy, taking yet another step toward individualized therapy.”

This preliminary news will eventually be detailed in full during an undisclosed scientific meeting and peer-reviewed publication sometime this year.