GBM @ Nature Medicine – snijderlab.org

Now out in Nature Medicine✨ Our discovery that an antidepressant (Vortioxetine) is effective against the aggressive primary brain tumor #glioblastoma in patient tissues (ex vivo) and in mouse models.

^{_{(open access – paid for by the ETH Zurich ❤️)}}

There’s a lot to unpack here:
👉 Pharmacoscopy predicts clinical response to chemotherapy in glioblastoma, enabling screening of existing neuro-active drugs.
👉 COSTAR: Graph-based in silico drug and mechanism-of-action discovery.
👉 A neural glioblastoma vulnerability on which multiple neuroactive drugs converge.
💫 Most importantly, clinical trials testing Vortioxetine in combination with standard of care are in preparation.

The work was driven by the amazing Dr. Sohyon Lee (starting her own lab at KAIST soon!) and in very close collaboration with Tobias Weiss and Michael Weller from the Universitätsspital Zürich (and many others!). Thank you to the patients and their families for supporting this study, to the key funders European Research Council (ERC) and PHRT – Personalized Health and Related Technologies, and to the many people who have supported and contributed to this study.

For patients or clinicians looking for information on the Vortioxetine clinical trial, please contact Prof. Dr. Michael Weller.

The news response has been quite neat (although not always accurate), some links: