Abstract
Glioblastomas are the most common and lethal form of malignant primary brain tumors. Although some progress has been made, the impact of recent advances in multimodality therapies on clinical outcome has been disappointing, with a median survival of less than 15 months. A major challenge in patients with glioblastomas is the propensity of the tumor to invade into adjacent brain tissue. Invasive tumor cells escape surgical removal and, because of their reduced proliferation rate and increased resistance to apoptosis, they are relatively resistant to radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Recently, there has been important progress in understanding the molecular determinants of glioma invasion and migration. This review will summarize some of the therapeutic strategies for inhibiting invasion in glioblastomas.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
Patrick Wen has received research support from Schering-Plough, Exelixis, Amgen, Novartis, Astra-Zeneca and Genentech. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the support of the Haley/Cairns and Borhek Brain Tumor Research Funds. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.