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Bevacizumab in real-life patients with recurrent glioblastoma: benefit or futility?

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Abstract

Purpose

Angiogenesis plays a key role in glioblastoma, but most anti-angiogenic therapy trials have failed to change the poor outcome of this disease. Despite this, and because bevacizumab is known to alleviate symptoms, it is used in daily practice. We aimed to assess the real-life benefit in terms of overall survival, time to treatment failure, objective response, and clinical benefit in patients with recurrent glioblastoma treated with bevacizumab.

Methods

This was a monocentric, retrospective study including patients treated between 2006 and 2016 in our institution.

Results

202 patients were included. The median duration of bevacizumab treatment was 6 months. Median time to treatment failure was 6.8 months (95%CI 5.3–8.2) and median overall survival was 23.7 months (95%CI 20.6–26.8). Fifty percent of patients had a radiological response at first MRI evaluation, and 56% experienced symptom amelioration. Grade 1/2 hypertension (n = 34, 17%) and grade one proteinuria (n = 20, 10%) were the most common side effects.

Conclusions

This study reports a clinical benefit and an acceptable toxicity profile in patients with recurrent glioblastoma treated with bevacizumab. As the panel of therapies is still very limited for these tumors, this work supports the use of bevacizumab as a therapeutic option.

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Data availability

Data available on request. The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Funding

This research received no external funding.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Oncology Department, Gustave Roussy, 94805, Villejuif, France

    Cristina Smolenschi, Elie Rassy, Gabriel Garcia, Naima Lezghed, Emeline Colomba, Mohamed Khettab, Sami Ammari, Mohamed Fekhi, Larisa Martanovschi, David Guyon, Bianca Cheaib, Frederic Dhermain & Sarah Naomie Dumont

  2. Saint Anne Hospital Center, 75014, Paris, France

    Johan Pallud & Edouard Dezamis

  3. Bicetre Hospital AP-HP-Kremlin, 94270, Bicetre, France

    Razvan Copaciu, Fabrice Parker, Lina Benadhou & Steven Knafo

  4. Phase I Department, Gustave Roussy, 94805, Villejuif, France

    Cristina Smolenschi

Authors
  1. Cristina Smolenschi
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  2. Elie Rassy
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Contributions

CS wrote the article under the supervision of SD. ER carried out the statistical analysis. FD reviewed the article. All the other authors had an equal contribution. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cristina Smolenschi.

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Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Gustave Roussy Cancer Center.

Informed consent

Patient consent was waived due to the death of the patients. We sent a letter to the families of the patients to inform them of this study.

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Smolenschi, C., Rassy, E., Pallud, J. et al. Bevacizumab in real-life patients with recurrent glioblastoma: benefit or futility?. J Neurol 270, 2702–2714 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-023-11600-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-023-11600-w

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