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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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.
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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.
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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