A major UK clinical trial using cannabis-derived drugs to treat the most aggressive brain tumour has opened in Leeds and Manchester.
The trial, funded by The Brain Tumour Charity, will investigate whether combining nabiximols and chemotherapy can help extend the lives of people diagnosed with recurrent glioblastoma.
The three-year phase II trial known as ARISTOCRAT, is led by Professor Susan Short at the University of Leeds School of Medicine, and coordinated by the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Birmingham.
It will recruit more than 230 glioblastoma patients at 14 NHS hospitals across England, Scotland and Wales in 2023. Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of brain cancer with an average survival of less than 10 months after recurrence.
In 2021, the phase I clinical trial in 27 patients found that nabiximols could be tolerated by patients in combination with chemotherapy, and has the potential to extend the lives of those with recurrent glioblastoma.
Should the trial prove successful, experts hope nabiximols could represent a new, promising addition to NHS treatment for glioblastoma patients since temozolomide chemotherapy in 2007.
The trial’s Principal Investigator, Professor Susan Short, Professor of Clinical Oncology and Neuro-Oncology at the University of Leeds, said: “The treatment of glioblastomas is extremely challenging. Even with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, nearly all of these brain tumours re-grow within a year, and unfortunately there are very few options for patients once this occurs.
“Cannabinoid-based drugs have well-described effects in the brain and there has been a lot of interest in their use across different cancers for a long time now. Glioblastomas have receptors to cannabinoids on their cell surface, and laboratory studies on glioblastoma cells have shown these drugs may slow tumour growth and work particularly well when used with temozolomide.
“We now have the opportunity to take these laboratory results, and those from the phase I trial and investigate whether this drug could help glioblastoma patients live longer in this first-of-a-kind randomised clinical trial.”
