Interstitial photodynamic therapy for newly diagnosed glioblastoma

Conclusion

We here show that iPDT is a promising local treatment concept for patients with newly diagnosed small-sized GBMs. Notably, despite eloquent tumor localizations, a tolerable risk profile was seen. A considerable proportion of patients, especially those with methylated MGMT-promoter status, experienced long-term PFS after iPDT. This might point to the induction of so far, at least in detail, unknown tumor-controlling processes, e.g. inflammatory/immunological responses. Patients treated by iPDT compared favorably in terms of PFS and OS to the cohort of patients who received the optimal conventional treatment, which is an especially impressive finding as the iPDT-treated tumors were not safely resectable. Future clinical and experimental studies should be performed to improve the understanding of the underlying cellular and serological mechanisms and, consequently, to help to identify the subset of patients most suitable for iPDT.

Author contributions

SQ, RS, HS, AR, and NT conceptualized the study; CS, MA, MS, SK, RE, RS, and AR investigated the data; SQ, CS, MF, and ME curated the data and aided with methodology; SQ, CS, MA, MF performed the formal analysis; RF, KB, and RE added resources; MF and AR validated the results; SQ and AR visualized the data; SQ and CS wrote the original draft; RS, HS, AR, and NT edited the draft; AR and NT supervised and administered the project; all authors reviewed the manuscript.

Funding

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This study received no external funding. Maximilian Aumiller, Marco Foglar and Mohamed El Fahim have received funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (GRK2274).

Data Availability

Clinical and molecular data on all patients are anonymized and stored in local data bases secured by passwords.

Code Availability

Not applicable.

Declarations

Footnotes

References