Dr Veronica Rendo recently presented her research findings at the Society for Neuro-Oncology annual meeting.
Dr Rendo was funded by The Brain Tumour Charity’s Future Leaders programme in 2020. In the past three years, she has made great progress in her research, investigating potential treatments for patients with recurrent glioblastoma.
Dr Rendo’s work has focused on investigating the effectiveness of navtemadlin (also known as KRT 232) in treatment for recurrent glioblastoma.
What is navtemadlin?
Navtemadlin is a targeted therapy drug that can stop the growth of cancer cells by blocking certain enzymes needed for cells to grow. It is a type of drug known as an “MDM2 inhibitor”, meaning it works by stopping the activity of a protein called MDM2.
MDM2 is involved in controlling cell growth. Levels of MDM2 need to be tightly regulated in the body to ensure cells are growing properly, and to maintain a balance between creating new cells and replacing old or damaged ones.
When levels of MDM2 are too high, this can lead to uncontrolled cell growth – a characteristic of conditions like cancer. In cancer, cells can avoid the usual signals that tell them when to stop dividing or when to self-destruct. As a result, they form a tumour, which can interfere with the normal functioning of organs and other tissues in the body.
What did Dr Rendo find out?
Researchers carried out a trial to study how effective different concentrations of the drug navtemadlin were within tumour tissue and to examine how tumour cells responded to and resisted treatment.
The findings revealed that lower concentrations of navtemadlin on its own was able to kill some cancer cells. However, when navtemadlin was combined with temozolomide (the standard of care chemotherapy drug for glioblastoma), it proved even more effective at killing cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed.
The results suggest that combining navtemadlin with the standard of care chemotherapy could be a promising approach for achieving long-lasting survival benefits for patients with recurrent glioblastoma. You can read more about Dr Rendo’s work here.
The Society for Neuro-Oncology Annual Meeting, 2023
Dr Rendo presented her findings at the Society for Neuro-Oncology annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada, in November, 2023.
The Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO) is a multidisciplinary organisation dedicated to promoting advances in neuro-oncology through research and education, attracting members in the profession worldwide. The SNO Annual Meeting is the world’s largest neuro-oncology conference, regularly attracting over 2600 researchers and clinician scientists from over 40 countries. The theme of SNO 2023 was “Neuro-Oncology at the Intersections: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Improve Patient Outcomes”.
Bringing together experts from various neuro-oncology fields, specialties, and interests, the SNO Annual Meetings serve as the leading platform for exchanging knowledge and acquiring insights into the future of research and treatment in neuro-oncology.
You can read more about the Society for Neuro oncology here.