Three recent breakthroughs in CAR T cells for the treatment of glioblastoma: Is it the light at the end of the tunnel?

Glioblastomas always become resistant to standard-of-care (SOC) therapies: surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy (with the eventual addition of tumor-treating fields). Strictly validated results exist for these three SOC therapies. However, doubts have been raised recently, as some trials used suboptimal controls, while other crucial trials were performed before the discovery of isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1)-mutated tumors, which makes tumors less aggressive. Given that patients with tumors harboring the IDH1-R132H mutation have significantly better survival, an unbalanced inclusion of these patients in clinical trials could have biased the data, resulting in longer survival being erroneously attributed to response to therapies.