David A. Reardon, M.D., Clinical Accelerator Investigator Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. David Reardon is the clinical director of the Center of Neuro-oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as well as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is currently the study chair of the clinical trial “Phase 2 Study of Durvalumab (MEDI4736) in Patients With Glioblastoma” (NCT02336165).

Brain and nervous system cancers account for one in every one hundred cancer diagnoses in the United States, and are two of the main cancers that affect children and young adults – 21% of all pediatric cancers are brain cancer. 300,000 individuals from around the world are diagnosed with this disease every year, culminating in over 240,000 deaths. Glioblastoma is the most dangerous and aggressive form of brain cancer. Only a quarter of newly diagnosed patients survive for at least two years, and fewer than 10% of patients survive for more than five years.

This trial examines various combinations of a checkpoint immunotherapy, a targeted antibody, and radiation in patients with an aggressive form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma. The checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab (Imfinzi™) blocks the PD-L1 pathway, the antibody bevacizumab (Avastin®) targets the VEGF pathway and thus impedes tumor blood vessel growth, and radiation can both kill cancer cells and alert the immune system to the cancer’s presence.

Additional investigators working on this trial include:

• Gavin Dunn, M.D., Ph.D., Washington University, St Louis
• Hui Gan, M.D., Austin Hospital, Australia
• Jennifer Clarke, M.D., M.P.H., University of California, San Francisco
• Jorg Dietrich, M.D., Mass General Hospital
• Michael Lim, M.D., Johns Hopkins
• Thomas Kaley, M.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
• Tim Cloughesy, M.D., University of California, Los Angeles

Projects and Grants