Tunable Temporal Drug Release for Optimized Synergistic Combination Therapy of Glioblastoma

ABSTRACT
Glioblastoma’s (GBM) invasive nature is part of the reason this primary brain tumor results in near 100%
mortality. Even with surgical resection, radiation, and chemotherapy, the median survival remains of only 12-15
months. Tumor invasion make complete surgical resection difficult leading to local recurrence within 2
centimeters of the original tumor in 90-95% of patients. Most systemically delivered chemotherapy agents are
ineffective against GBM because they cannot reach the brain at therapeutic concentrations due to the blood-
brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is a highly selective and semi-permeable membrane that separates the
circulating blood from the brain tissues as a protective mechanism. The capillaries that line the blood brain barrier
have especially restrictive tight-junctions that significantly reduce permeation of systemically administered
chemotherapeutics to brain tissues. A promising strategy to avoid the blood-brain barrier and reduce dose-
limiting toxicities observed with systemic delivery is to administer drugs directly to the brain by implanting them
within the cavity left after GBM resection. One way to achieve this it to load drug into a biodegradable polymer
which allows for controlled temporal release of drug as the polymer degrades. Gliadel®, a biodegradable
polymeric wafer that delivers carmustine into the resection cavity, is a clinical example of this type of therapy,
and increased patient survival by 10-18 weeks. However, the use of more efficacious drugs, facilitated by recent
advancement in cancer genotyping, could greatly improve the success of interstitial therapy. This could lead to
personalized chemotherapeutic selection where one or more drugs can be co-administered based on a patient’s
tumor-specific genetic mutations. In addition, our preliminary data suggests that the release rate of drugs from
the polymer can greatly affect outcomes. Drug release rate can be controlled via polymer degradation rate as
well as formulation of the drug within the polymer. We hypothesize that more potent chemotherapies loaded into
biodegradable polymers tailored for optimal drug release rate would generate a platform that could be translated
to the clinics to improved GBM therapy.

Grant Number: 5R01CA257009-05
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Kristy Ainslie