Ilyas Sahin, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Medical Oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, shared on X:
“Diffuse midline glioma (DMG) is a rare and aggressive brain tumor that mostly affects children, with very limited treatment options.
A new Nature Medicine study suggests that levetiracetam (Keppra), a commonly used antiseizure drug, may help slow DMG by disrupting signals between neurons and cancer cells.
Across retrospective patient cohorts, children who received levetiracetam tended to live longer, and researchers also saw antitumor effects in preclinical models.
Very intriguing, but still early. The clinical data are retrospective and based on small numbers, so prospective trials are needed before this changes practice.”
Title: Levetiracetam therapeutically targets GABAergic synapses in diffuse midline glioma
Authors: Tara Barron, Richard Drexler, Aaron Mochizuki, Evan Cantor, Kiarash Shamardani, Pamelyn J. Woo, Neeraj Soni, Dana Tlais, Andrea Franson, Samantha Lyons, Truman Knowles, Shannon Raber, Vilina Mehta, Michael A. Quezada, Michael B. Keough, Samin Malaki Jahan, Linh Thuy Vo, Enrique Herrera Castañeda, Kathryn R. Taylor, Lijun Ni, Kim Kilian, Samuel H. Wu, Franz L. Ricklefs, Ulrich Schüller, Sabine Mueller, Paul G. Fisher, Cynthia J. Campen, Hannes Vogel, Sonia Partap, Kai Kaila, Carl Koschmann, Michelle Monje
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You can also read: ‘New Paper Alert: Antiseizure Drug Levetiracetam Linked to Longer Survival in Diffuse Midline Glioma‘
