Hi guys!  I am extremely excited to share what I believe is groundbreaking news in the battle against brain cancer and other solid tumors. In this case, it’s a response-prediction test which improves outcomes by testing live cancer cells against a number of potential therapies to demonstrate which ones will be most effective in killing the tumor cells.

Results are available in just seven days and provide oncologists with evidence-based guidelines in choosing which drug therapy to use. This means that instead of randomly picking a drug from many possibilities, oncologists are able select the drug that is most likely be of help.

Read the full press release HERE.

Results to date are based on an extremely small sample of recurrent GBM patients and are promising, doubling median progression free survival time from 4 months to 7.9 months. KIYATEC’s test results informed two of the seven patients’ successful treatment with dabrafenib, a targeted agent. Neither had a typically associated genetic mutation, demonstrating that the test can uncover effective drug options that would have normally been missed.

KIYATEC’s test is currently only available in clinical trials (see https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03561207  for details). They are now accepting patients with newly diagnosed or recurrent malignant brain tumors who are about to have a surgery, as fresh tumor tissue is required to run the test.

This study is open to multiple types of advanced cancer including epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), high-grade gliomas (HGG) limited to anaplastic astrocytoma (AA) and glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), and high-grade rare tumors (RT).

I am beyond excited about this breakthrough in the diagnosis and treatment of brain cancer and other solid tumors. Most importantly, it takes the treatment decision from one that has been shown to work in treating “other cancer patients” to one that has been demonstrated to work in treating the patient’s own unique live tumor cells. Truly a game changer.

Cheers!

Dellann Elliott Mydland
President & CEO
EndBrainCancer Initiative (EBCI)/Chris Elliott Fund