Brain tumor chemotherapy with mithramycin and vincristine

Abstract

Mithramycin chemotherapy with or without concomitant use of vincristine sulfate, either by continuous arterial infusion or by protracted intravenous administration, failed to produce worthwhile results in 15 patients seriously ill with malignant gliomas or metastatic brain tumors. Their postoperative survival was not prolonged. Although one individual showed short-term improvement after a 4-day carotid infusion of mithramycin and another seemed better temporarily after 3 weeks of daily intravenous treatment with this drug, the overall morbidity associated with either method of treatment controverted the significance of these isolated favorable responses. A child with a disseminated glioma tolerated but did not benefit from 2 infusions of mithramycin into the cisterna magna at 0.01 and 0.015 times the daily intravenous dose. The effect of mithramycin and vincristine on 8 of the malignant gliomas in this series was assessed in vitro. The susceptibility of the cultured tumor cells to these drugs ranged from slight to extreme, according to a morphological grading of acute cytotoxic alterations which did not correlate with the clinical results.