Project Summary: Forsyth

Project Title: p75NTR is a rational drug target for malignant glioma.

Peter Forsyth, MD

• Invasion of malignant glioma cells into the surrounding normal brain remains a major cause of treatment failure in patients with this disease and is poorly understood.
• The Forsyth lab discovered that p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) is a critical factor in allowing malignant gliomas cells, including brain tumor initiating cells (BTICs), to invade surrounding brain tissue; it is expressed robustly in 80% GBM patient specimens and is activated upon cleavage by γ-secretase.
• Investigators will develop and test novel and known inhibitors of p75NTR in preclinical models and BTICs to determine if this strategy is sufficiently promising to test in a clinical trial in patients with recurrent malignant glioma as monotherapy or in combination with an anti-angiogenic agent.