Targeting Glioblastoma: Advances in Drug Delivery and Novel Therapeutic Approaches

Glioblastoma (GB) is the most lethal type of primary tumor in the central nervous system. Current treatments include surgical resection followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy. With this therapeutic regimen, the median survival is less than two years. However, these treatments do not much improve the overall survival of GB patients. GBs are highly angiogenic and invasive tumors and often acquire resistance to therapy. The invasive nature of the disease limits the ability to achieve complete resection of the tumor and the majority of GB patients will experience disease relapse. Moreover, GB is highly heterogeneous, harboring different mutations and presenting different phenotypes. As the brain is considered to be an immune-privileged tissue, GB is defined as a cold tumor for which current immunotherapies have not yet been demonstrated to improve survival. On top of these challenges, the blood brain barrier (BBB) restricts the uptake of drugs by the brain, thus limiting the therapeutic options. Therefore, enormous efforts are being dedicated to the development of novel nanomedicines, which will be able to cross the BBB and specifically target the cancer cells. Here, the current achievements in drug delivery and novel therapeutic approaches for GB therapy are discussed.