RE:Matthew Perraton GBM Update from Jan 2 email
Thanks for posting Eog. There is some very interesting stuff here.
For those that are not aware the way you evaluate solid tumours is different that non-solid and bladder. It all comes down to special criteria called RECIST. You treat and then you calculate any drop in size of the mass (GBM here) and a certain amount is considered real. With a lot of newer cancer agents, you take a drug regularly (IV or oral) and it takes a while to see the effect and prove that it is real.
And then there is the issue of resistance to the drug. I suspect resistance would be less of an issue with Rutherrin as the cancer needs iron. No way around that.
With Rutherrin, it takes advantage of the iron needs of the cancer. The resulting immediate damage would be visible on imaging fairly quickly and you could likely do a series of follow up doses to shrink it further. What this means is that the goal with GBM is not a cure like with bladder cancer. In NMIBC you are checking the bladder over and over again for cancer cells appearing. With RECIST, if you give the drug and it has shrunken a certain amount in a few months then the drug is considered effective. You can't really aim to cure GBM (yet). So if Rutherrin works, you would know pretty quicklly and there would not be a huge follow up timeline. That means that there is the potential for a much faster route to success with GBM then with NIBC. IMO