PHOENIX — In July 2017, Arizona Senator John McCain was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancerknown as glioblastoma. A little more than one year after the news was made public, Senator McCain passed away.
“Glioblastoma is, unfortunately, the most common malignant brain tumor in adults. And it's also considered the deadliest cancer in humans,” said Dr. Nader Sanai, the director of Neurosurgical Oncology at the Barrow Neurological Institute and the director of the Ivy Brain Tumor Center.
Senator McCain’s battle with the deadly disease is something Dr. Sanai is intimately familiar with. As the director of the Ivy Brain Tumor Center, he regularly sees patients who face the same harrowing prognosis as the late senator.
“This is not a tumor that strikes patients with a particular socioeconomic background, ethnic background, family, familial genetics,” Dr. Sanai said. “It's a spontaneous tumor that occurs at any time in life really in adults.”
According to The Epidemiology and Outcome of Glioblastoma, the survival rate for glioblastoma patients is typically two-and-a-half years, and “less than 5% of patients survive 5 years following diagnosis.”
Glioblastoma tumors are particularly challenging to treat because they form in the body’s most vital and sensitive organ – the brain. Any intervention to treat the tumor, according to Dr. Sanai, can also harm the brain.
But he and the team at the Ivy Brain Tumor Center spend day-in and day-out searching for a cure.
"Unlike other tumors, we know very little about what drives these tumors. And so it's hard to develop drugs to undermine the drivers of a tumor when you don't know what those are,” Dr. Sanai said. “From our perspective, this is one of the highest peaks to climb in medicine — to overcome this disease.”
Since Senator McCain’s death four years ago, there have been increased efforts to change the fate of glioblastoma patients. But progress has been slow.
“In fact, in the past 30 years, we've only had one new drug approved with any effect in glioblastoma patients,” Dr. Sanai said.
But the long road to beating glioblastoma doesn’t deter Dr. Sanai and others on his team from working to find a cure.
“So we think that the horizon is still bright for this patient population. We believe that we're going to be part of the solution. And frankly, that's what drives us every day,” he said.
