Vorasidenib for Low-Grade Glioma Doubles Progression-Free Survival

At the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, researchers reported on a global phase III trial showing that the targeted therapy vorasidenib more than doubled progression-free survival for patients with grade 2 gliomas with IDH1 or IDH2 mutations. The therapy also delayed the use of radiation therapy and chemotherapy to an even greater degree.

In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Peter Forsyth, MD, the chairman of the Neuro-Oncology Program at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, discusses the clinical significance of the results.

Following is a transcript of his remarks:

So there’s a phase III study of vorasidenib, and this is an IDH1 inhibitor for low-grade gliomas. It’s work by Ingo Mellinghoff at [Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center].

And low-grade glioma brain tumors have this mutation IDH1, and then there’s a drug that was — well, there’s many drugs — but this drug was designed to inhibit that sort of mutation, that abnormal protein. And the results are pretty remarkable. Low-grade gliomas are mostly in young adults, and they kind of grow really slowly, but eventually they’re lethal.

And so in the study they randomized people, they have about 330 patients in a big international study, 10 different countries in a very rare tumor. So it’s really amazing that they got all this done. And they found that patients that were treated with this drug had twice as long progression-free survival. So it was about 28 months versus 11 months if they’re on a placebo.

So this is super significant because now we have new options for patients with low-grade gliomas where maybe we can delay treatment with radiation or surgery. And as I mentioned, these are all young patients, so you really want to preserve their health and their brain and not do too much to them. So it’s gonna be really exciting.

Now that this is published or announced, it’s going to lead to a whole bunch of new studies about how you combine this with other treatments. How long can you delay? So it’s gonna be really, really exciting.

Advances in brain tumor have been slow compared to all the other cancers that you see at this meeting where there’s sort of a breakthrough every meeting or every week it seems like. So it’s just very exciting that we have this new option for young patients with low-grade gliomas.

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