University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine and Medical School
What a year this has been for the Brain Tumor Program at the University of Minnesota! We are thankful to our philanthropic partners, including our friends at Humor to Fight the Tumor, who have accelerated life-saving research. The outstanding work done by Dr. Liz Pluhar at the College of Veterinary Medicine and Dr. Mike Olin from the Department of Pediatrics led to the FDA granting an IND for the combination of our new drug, CD200AR-L, in combination with our brain tumor vaccine, GBM6-AD, to treat people with recurrent glioblastoma. The clinical trial (clinicaltrials.gov NCT04642937) commenced around Christmas time and is led by Dr. Elizabeth Neil from the Department of Neurology. The first 6 patients have been treated and we are very encouraged by the results to date. Our friends and collaborators at the University of California, San Francisco have also used our GBM6-AD vaccine to treat people with low-grade gliomas and are about to report results that are very promising. Humor to Fight the Tumor provided funding that was very important in the initial development of both GBM6-AD and CD200AR-L.
In cooperation with investigators from Mayo Clinic, Dr. Antonella Borgatti at the University of Minnesota is now treating pet dogs suffering from malignant melanoma, cancer that metastasizes to the brain, with CD200AR-L. We have also developed an active collaboration with investigators from Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville to develop new therapeutic approaches to malignant brain tumors using CD200AR-L.
These innovations, which started with seed money from Humor to Fight the Tumor, are just a small part of the creative work being done by the expanding Brain Tumor Program at the University of Minnesota.