The Clínica Universidad de Navarra has initiated a clinical essay to assess the efficacy of an immunotherapy treatment, consisting of the application of personalized vaccines -produced with the patient's own healthy and tumor cells-, aimed at treating glioblastomas, one of the most aggressive and frequent malignant brain tumors. The new therapy is administered to participating patients in combination with the standard first-line treatment consisting of surgical removal of the tumor followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy with temozolomide. The Clinic is currently the only Spanish center conducting a study of these characteristics, for which it has recently received authorization from the Medicines Agency of the Ministry of Health. For research it is planned to recruit a sample of 37 patients.

The essay is promoted and developed by the Neuro-oncology and Cell Therapy areas of the medical center itself, in partnership with the research center Applied Medicine (CIMA ) of the University of Navarra, through the high school Scientific and Technological (ICT) of the same university. The research has obtained funding from the FIS (Fondo de research Sanitaria) of the Ministry of Health for non-commercial drugs.

In essence, the production of the personalized vaccines takes place at the laboratory GMP Cell Therapy at the Clínica Universidad de Navarrawhere tumor proteins are processed and then combined with immune system cells obtained from the patient's blood, which are taught to mount an immune response against the tumor. These preparations are kept frozen to be administered to the patient as vaccines during the following months, combined with conventional therapy.

It should be recalled that an immunotherapy treatment of similar characteristics was developed more than two years ago by a team of researchers from the CIMA and the Clínica Universidad de Navarraled by Dr. Maurizio Bendandi. In this case, the procedure was based on the production and administration of idiotypic and personalized vaccines for patients with first relapse follicular lymphoma. The essay demonstrated clinical efficacy in changing the course of the disease.

More than 2,400 new patients affected per year in Spain

Glioblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor. It has an incidence of approximately 6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants per year, which means that in Spain more than 2,400 new patients are affected each year. There is currently no effective treatment, making it one of the ten tumors causing the highest number of deaths per year issue .

Specifically, as explained by Dr. Ricardo Díez Valle, neurosurgeon at the Clínica Universidad de NavarraAccording to Dr. Ricardo Diez Valle, "patients with glioblastoma who have been treated with the standard procedure have a survival average of between 12 and 15 months". However, in some of the few programs of study carried out in the world, in cases treated with immunotherapy "the average survival rate exceeds 30 months", assures the physician.