Current and Future Drugs for Brain Tumors Treatment

Primary brain tumors are strikingly heterogenous and dramatically differ in biological features, clinical phenotype, response to treatments, and outcome. The choice of systemic treatments for primary brain tumors remains challenging, due to resistance to antitumor agents, problems of drug delivery or poor tolerability. In the last decades, significant advances have occurred in the knowledge of molecular mechanisms fostering tumor growth. Consequently, the development of new drugs (from traditional systemic chemotherapy to targeted molecular agents) has considerably grown. In this chapter, we review the state of art of systemic therapies for primary brain tumors from standard treatments to novel approaches. We will focus on diffuse gliomas (glioblastomas and lower-grade gliomas), as they represent the most common primary brain tumors with the highest impact on clinical practice and prevalence in clinical trials. Also, we will summarise the role of targeted agents for gliomas, which display molecular alterations that are critical for tumor growth and may be specifically inhibited.