What is it about?

One of the most common adverse side effects of treatment with temozolomide is myelosupression. We investigated whether this side effect could be used as a biomarker of clinical outcomes, whereby changes in circulating blood counts during treatment are predictive of overall survival.

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Why is it important?

Dosing of chemotherapy is based on body surface area and does not account for interpatient variability in drug metabolism or resistance mechanism. Inadequate dosing could contribute to the observed resistance to cytotoxic treatment. The identification of a noninvasive biomarker for treatment response and overall survival would significantly improve patient management and potentially alter current dosing protocols.

Perspectives

Given the routine and reliable sampling of blood counts in glioblastoma patients receiving standard therapy, monitoring changes in white blood cell counts could be used by clinicians to noninvasively predict clinical outcomes and guide dosing of chemotherapy to maximize outcomes with our current treatments.

Mr. Eugene Vaios
Harvard University

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This page is a summary of: Bone marrow response as a potential biomarker of outcomes in glioblastoma patients, Journal of Neurosurgery, July 2017, Journal of Neurosurgery Publishing Group (JNSPG),
DOI: 10.3171/2016.7.jns16609.
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