Approved Mozobil May Have Role in Glioblastoma Treatment

Dr. George Lundberg, MedPage's Editor at Large, is really excited about an article that was published in March in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. And he predicts big things for the article's authors, like a Nobel Prize.

The article, by California academicians and an employee at AntiCancer, Inc., describes how vasculogenesis* of irradiated tumors can be inhibited by an already approved drug, AMD3100, in a mouse model of glioblastoma multiforme—the deadliest of brain cancers.

AMD3100 is also known as plerixafor or Mozobil, which is owned by Genzyme. The injectable drug is currently indicated, in combination with G-CSF, to mobilize hematopoietic stem cells for autologous transplantation in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma or multiple myeloma. So human trials of the drug and uncontrolled case studies can begin, Lundberg argues, more or less immediately.

G-CSF = granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (eg, filgrastim [Neupogen; Amgen]).

* Which is distinguished from angiogenesis or "the sprouting and proliferation of endothelial cell from local vessels. The authors posit that tumor recurrence after radiation is largely mediated by vasculogenesis, the "colonization of circulating endothelial or other cells primarily from the bone marrow."

Photo of Ted Kennedy, who died last year of glioblastoma: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.