Poster Presenter

Drug Development Of 2-Deoxy Glucose, A New Radiosensitizer For Treating Glioblastoma multiforme
Binny Krishnankutty, Naveen Kumar and Julius Anthony Vaz
India

Treatment options for subjects with advanced carcinoma are limited. Unique approaches are being attempted in drug discovery to develop drugs that improve quality of life (QoL). Discovery research has shifted its approach from developing drugs in oncology that prolong survival time alone to drugs that improve QoL and offer a better pharmacoeconomic profile, additionally. Radiosensitizers, or substances sensitizing cancer cells to radiotherapy, form a separate class of drugs intended to offer such additional benefits to cancer patients, especially those with a poor prognosis.

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive malignant tumor of glial cells with a grave prognosis and radiotherapy is the mainstay of management. 2-Deoxyglucose (2-DG), the radiosensitizer has shown promising results in the treatment of GBM. Being a glucose analogue, 2-DG gets accumulated in malignant tumor cells and inhibits glycolysis. This makes tumor cells susceptible to DNA damage and cell death during radiotherapy. As malignant cells are sensitized to radiation, a hypo fractionated radiation is sufficient to produce the response as observed with conventional radiotherapy.

This poster will take you through the development of 2-DG from preclinical stages to Phase III clinical development in a step-by-step process. Further, advantages and limitations of 2-DG will be highlighted.