Nanomedicines and the future of glioma

Abstract

There is a higher incidence of brain tumours in the UK than the world average for both men (8.1 per 100,000), and women (5.3 per 100,000). Malignant gliomas are the most common primary brain tumours of which glioblastoma (GBM) is the most prevalent. GBM is also known to be the most biologically aggressive and cellularly heterogeneous and is highly diffusively infiltrative in nature which renders surgical excision impossible without causing significant neurological deficit. Typically, following surgery, patients undergo a course of radiotherapy or a combination of chemo/radiotherapy (Stupp protocol). However, despite surgical debulking and improvements in radio- and chemotherapies, the prognosis of patients with GBM remains extremely poor, with a median survival time of only 14.5 months from diagnosis to death.