A genetically modified virus can increase the life expectancy of children with brain tumors.
- For the first time, a modified virus has been used to treat infiltrating brainstem glioma (GITC).
- It is a rare tumor: in France, nearly 50 children are affected each year, as many girls as boys, but it is particularly aggressive and deadly since half of the patients do not survive more than a year.
- Each year in Europe, more than 35,000 new cases of childhood cancer are diagnosed and 6,000 children die from it.
It is a new hope in the fight against cancer in children and in particular in the treatment of the childhood brain tumor called the “infiltrating glioma of the brainstem” (GITC)
In an article published on June 30 in the journal The New England Journal Of Medicineresearchers explain that virotherapy, combined with radiotherapy in children with GITC, led to changes in the activity of lymphocytes, white blood cells whose role is the body’s immune defense against infectious attacks , and reduction or stabilization of tumor size in young patients.
Virotherapy is a therapeutic strategy that can eliminate cells or tissues from an organism or reprogram certain dysfunctional cells. And not only are the cells killed by the virus, but the resulting cellular waste stimulates the immune system against the tumor.
Oncovirus
Virotherapy consisted in this specific case of modifying oncoviruses, viruses having the ability to make cancerous the cell they infect, from the family of adenoviruses, specific to the respiratory tract.
These are the very ones that make tumors cancerous in the context of infiltrating glioma cancer of the brainstem.
Increase Survival
To reach this conclusion, the scientists conducted a clinical trial with 12 patients aged 3 to 18, and the modified virus was found to be safe for children, without serious side effects and well tolerated by patients.
Applied with radiotherapy, the virus was able to increase the average survival of participants from 12 months to 17.8 months.
Two of the children participating in this study are still alive, three years after the detection of the tumour.
“It may seem like little progress, little time saved on the disease, but it is a decisive step forward,” says Jaime Gállego, neurologist at the University Clinic of Navarre, coordinator of the brain tumor field and co-author of this study.
Indeed, the survival rate has not increased for more than 15 years in the face of this type of cancer, which is the deadliest in children.
Hence the need to further develop research to improve treatment and above all increase the life expectancy of affected children.
Brain tumor
Invasive brainstem glioma (IBG) is a brain tumor located under the brain, above the medulla oblongata.
It is a deep and fragile area related to vital functions such as balance, breathing, bladder control, heart rate and blood pressure. This region is also traversed by nerves related to vision, hearing, speech, swallowing and movement.
The clinical signs of these tumors are impairment of balance, damage to certain cranial nerves and motor difficulties and most often occur in children aged 5 to 7, although this disease also affects young adolescents.
In general, they evolve rapidly over a few weeks before the diagnosis (less than two months usually).
Various symptoms
The disease is characterized by various symptoms: strabismus, loss of balance and falls, significant fatigue, walking disorders, difficulty closing one of the eyelids, double vision, difficulty swallowing and chewing, weakness in the arms and legs, difficulty urinating.
Frequently, these disorders can be preceded by a change in behavior (emotional lability, aggressiveness, sleep disorders).
