The following study of
Sonodynamic Therapy notes how
PDT with Rutherrin makes brain tumours vulnerable to immunological treatments. The use of
Rutherrin PDT could be a turning point in treating hard-to-treat
GBM, both as a monotherapy and/or a combo treatment which gives established treatments a fighting chance of working.
Hopefully a Phase 1 Clinical trial of
Rutherrin PDT for GBM will begin in 2025.
The abscopal effects of sonodynamic therapy in cancer Victoria G. Collins, Dana Hutton, Kismet Hossain-Ibrahim, James Joseph & Sourav Banerjee
British Journal of Cancer (2024)
Conversion of immunologically cold tumours
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) has an immunologically “cold” TME created by a lack of strong TAAs, secretion of immunosuppressive factors, and occasionally downregulated MHCs [73,74,75]. This is defined by the degree of T cell infiltration. In comparison, a “hot” tumour is T cell-infiltrated and susceptible to T cell-mediated attack [76, 77]. However, GBMs also have an immunosuppressed myeloid landscape that works to control immune response while allowing tumour cell proliferation [78,79,80,81]. These mechanisms mean that immunotherapy has little effect on GBM [82].
One study investigating this showed that a combined Rutherrin-PDT increased CD8 + T-cells in a rat glioma model [83]. The immune-modulating effect on the TME would therefore convert the initially cold tumour to a hot tumour that would have higher susceptibility to immunological treatments. The identification of the exact immunological response to SDT and subsequent effects of this on the TME is therefore needed to further assess the clinical role of SDT in cancer treatment both as an individual and combined therapy [84, 85].