Glioblastoma Awareness Day: New Approaches to Treating GBM

The third Wednesday in July is Glioblastoma Awareness Day. This day of action raises awareness about glioblastoma—also known as glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM for short. It is a rare, particularly aggressive brain tumor.

Awareness Day was established in the United States after U.S. Senator John McCain died of glioblastoma in 2018. Since then, patient organizations and foundations have used this day to raise public awareness of the disease and the situation of those affected.

At the same time, the day of action is intended to help advance research on glioblastoma and promote the development of new treatment approaches. Due to the relatively small number of cases, treatment options are less advanced than for many other types of cancer. For those affected, the diagnosis is particularly serious: Glioblastoma is associated with a poor prognosis, can also affect children, and, as a complex, dynamic tumor disease, often responds only to a limited extent to standard therapy.

Patients with glioblastoma are regularly treated at the IOZK. Individualized multimodal immunotherapy can offer an additional treatment option and is frequently used for this diagnosis.

The experiences gained during treatment were also evaluated scientifically. This led to retrospective studies examining treatment outcomes and the effectiveness of the therapeutic approach.

You can find additional scientific papers by the IOZK on glioblastoma here: IOZK Publication List