Current Signal Transduction Therapy for Brain Tumors Review Article

Hidehiro      Oka; Yuzuru      Niibe; Satoshi      Utsuki; Kazushige      Hayakawa; Kiyotaka      Fujii

Abstract

Primary central nervous system (CNS) tumors account for only 2% of all adult cancers and the annual incidence of primary malignant brain cancer was 7.3 per 100,000 person-years. Malignant gliomas are the most common primary CNS tumors in adults accounting for 78% of all primary malignant CNS tumors. Glial neoplasms represent about 40% of all primary CNS tumors, over three quarters being malignant. The median survival of patients with glioblastoma was 14.6 months after tereatment. Although recent basic and clinical research of malignant gliomas has improved, there is limitation of the outcome of the patients with malignant gliomas. Treatment strategy of tumor resection and radiotherapy for this tumor is still important and a recent advance in the use of concurrent chemo-radiation has improved survival in a large fraction of patients. New approaches using these signal transductional and gene researches are developing and may promise for further survival gains in the near future.

Keywords: Signal transduction, brain tumors, target therapy, gene therapy