Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most frequent and deadliest primary brain tumor. With the advent of immunotherapy, a number of cancers previously recalcitrant to all types of therapies have been successfully treated and even cured. Unfortunately, immunotherapy in its current form has not been shown to exert a clinical benefit for most GBM patients, probably due to unique composition and features of immune cells found in GBM. Due to certain defects in these immune cells, they have turned themselves from attackers of cancer cells to helpers of cancer cells. Our previous work has identified a class of important molecular regulators for these immune cells in GBM, and we have also found that two potent...

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Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most frequent and deadliest primary brain tumor. With the advent of immunotherapy, a number of cancers previously recalcitrant to all types of therapies have been successfully treated and even cured. Unfortunately, immunotherapy in its current form has not been shown to exert a clinical benefit for most GBM patients, probably due to unique composition and features of immune cells found in GBM. Due to certain defects in these immune cells, they have turned themselves from attackers of cancer cells to helpers of cancer cells. Our previous work has identified a class of important molecular regulators for these immune cells in GBM, and we have also found that two potent drugs that were developed for other diseases could effectively fix the immune cells in GBM and make them able to recognize and attack cancer cells again. Furthermore, these two drugs have been tested in clinical trials and found to be safe and able to get into the brain effectively. Our proposal will help us further understand how these drugs achieve their functions of fixing immune cells and develop better therapeutic approaches by combining with other types of immunotherapies.

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