Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Immunotherapy offers a promising bet against brain cancer

Could the latest immunotherapies succeed in tackling the deadliest form of brain cancer?
  1. Michael Eisenstein

    1. Michael Eisenstein is a science writer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

The stars seemed to be aligned for rindopepimut in 2015. A trio of clinical studies had indicated strongly that this peptide-based vaccine elicited an immune response that could meaningfully delay the progression of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most aggressive form of brain cancer. The vaccine’s manufacturer, Celldex Therapeutics of Hampton, New Jersey, lobbied the US Food and Drug Administration for accelerated approval on the basis of phase II data but the agency demurred, preferring to wait for the results of a phase III trial.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 561, S42-S44 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06705-6

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Brain cancer, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 01 November 2018: An earlier version of this story implied that all of the 100 people in the extended-survival subset were alive 40 months later.

References

  1. Louveau, A. et al. Nature 523, 337–341 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Batich, K. A. et al. Clin. Cancer Res. 23, 1898–1909 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Liau, L. M. et al. J. Transl. Med. 16, 142 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. O’Rourke, D. M. et al. Sci. Transl. Med. 9, eaaa0984 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Brown, M. C. et al. Sci. Transl. Med. 9, eaan4220 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Desjardins, A. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 379, 150–161 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Cloughesy, T. F. et al. Neuro. Oncol. 20, 1383–1392 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links