Single-agent Bevacizumab in the Treatment of Symptomatic Newly Diagnosed and Recurrent/Refractory Pediatric Cervicomedullary Brainstem Low-grade Gliomas: A Single Institutional Experience.

Bevacizumab-based therapies have been utilized as single or combination therapy of refractory/recurrent pediatric low-grade gliomas. Its efficacy for symptomatic cervicomedullary low-grade gliomas (cmLGGs) in the upfront and the recurrent setting is less known. We report our retrospective single institutional experience from 2015 to 2021 with single-agent bevacizumab for symptomatic cmLGG. Six consecutive patients (4 female, ages 2 to 12 y) with newly diagnosed (n=3) and recurrent/refractory (n=3) symptomatic nondisseminated cmLGG (5/6 biopsy-proven, 2 BRAFV600E, 2 BRAF-KIAA1549) were treated with single-agent bevacizumab. All demonstrated radiographic response most pronounced on post-gadolinium T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (2 complete, 4 partial) at a median of 8 weeks (range: 2 to 12 wk). Clinical response was seen in all patients with improvement in cranial nerve abnormalities (3 recurrent/refractory, 1 newly diagnosed), strength (2 recurrent/refractory, 2 newly diagnosed), pain (2 recurrent/refractory), and anorexia (1 newly diagnosed). Four patients (2 recurrent/refractory, 2 newly diagnosed) experienced disease progression on subsequent adjunct therapies, 2 of which (the 2 newly diagnosed patients) are currently being rechallenged. At a mean follow-up of 7 months, all patients are clinically stable without disease progression. Single-agent bevacizumab may be effective in the management of symptomatic newly diagnosed and recurrent/refractory cmLGG and warrants further evaluation in a clinical trial setting.

Trametinib-based Treatment of Pediatric CNS Tumors: A Single Institutional Experience.

MEK inhibitors are an emerging therapy with increasing use in mitogen-activated protein kinase-driven central nervous system (CNS) tumors. There is limited data regarding efficacy and toxicity in pediatric patients. We report our clinical experience with trametinib-based therapy for the treatment of 14 consecutive pediatric patients with recurrent low-grade glioma (N=11) or high-grade CNS tumors (N=3) with MAP kinase pathway mutations. Patients received trametinib as monotherapy (N=9) or in combination (N=5) with another antineoplastic agent. Nine patients (64%) were progression free during treatment. Five patients showed a partial response, while 4 had stable disease. Two patients (14%) progressed on therapy. All partial responses were in patients with low-grade tumors. The remaining 3 patients were not evaluable due to toxicity limiting duration of therapy. Two of 3 patients with low-grade glioma with leptomeningeal dissemination showed radiographic treatment response. Five patients reported improved clinical symptoms while on trametinib. Adverse events on trametinib-based therapy included dermatologic, mouth sores, fever, gastrointestinal, infection, neutropenia, headache, and fatigue, and were more common in patients using combination therapy. Trametinib-based therapy demonstrated signals of efficacy in our single institutional cohort of pediatric patients with mitogen-activated protein kinase-driven CNS tumors. Our observations need to be confirmed in a clinical trial setting.

Nivolumab in the Treatment of Recurrent or Refractory Pediatric Brain Tumors: A Single Institutional Experience.

Successful use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in a variety of cancers has generated interest in using this approach in pediatric brain tumors. We performed a retrospective review of 10 consecutive children (6 boys, 4 girls; ages, 2 to 17 y), with recurrent or refractory pediatric brain tumors (5 high-grade glioma, 1 low-grade glioma, pineoblastoma, medulloblastoma, ependymoma, and CNS embryonal tumor, NOS) treated at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego from 2015 to 2017 with the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (3 mg/kg every 2 wk). Eight of 10 patients received prior chemotherapy and 9 radiation therapy. Nine patients had radiographic disease progression (median, 2.5 doses). Median time to progression was 5.5 weeks (1.6 to 24 wk). Three patients (2 with high-grade glioma, 1 with CNS embryonal tumor NOS) showed a partial response to treatment at the primary tumor site and 2 of 3 had progression of metastatic disease. Grade 2 toxicities were observed without dose limiting side effects. Tumor mutation burden (TMB) was low to intermediate (median, 1.3; range, 0 to 6.3). Median survival for PD-L1 positive patients was 13.7 weeks versus 4.2 weeks for PD-L1 negative patients (ρ=0.08) nivolumab was well tolerated in our series of pediatric recurrent brain tumors with some transient partial responses in patients with positive PD-L1 expression and higher TMB. Our findings suggest that the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in pediatric brain tumor patients should be limited to those with elevated PD-L1 expression and TMB.

Single-agent bevacizumab in the treatment of recurrent or refractory pediatric low-grade glioma: A single institutional experience.

INTRODUCTION: Bevacizumab-based therapy has been demonstrated to be effective in the treatment of refractory or recurrent pediatric low-grade glioma (LGG); however its efficacy as a single agent is less understood. METHODS: We report our experience with single-agent bevacizumab for the treatment of recurrent or refractory LGG treated with either standard 2 week dosing (10 mg/kg/dose every 2 weeks) or with a standard 2 week dosing followed by an increased interval dosing (10 mg/kg/dose every 4 weeks). RESULTS: From 2012 to 2017, 15 patients (five males and 10 females) with recurrent/refractory LGG (nine suprasellar, three thalamic, two brainstem, and one intramedullary spinal cord) were treated with a total of 156 doses of bevacizumab (115 every 2 week dosing, 41 every 4 week dosing, median 10 doses). Patients were refractory to a median of one nonsurgical therapy (range 0-3) prior to treatment with bevacizumab. Twelve of 15 demonstrated radiographic response (three complete, nine partial, and three stable disease). Significant clinical responses including improved visual fields (four), cranial neuropathy (three3), strength (seven), and gait (two) were observed. Bevacizumab was discontinued in 12 patients (resolution, one; disease stability, seven; progression, two; toxicity, one; and other, one) and three patients continue to receive monthly bevacizumab. Eleven patients eventually had radiographic progression (median 5 months, range 0.5-31) without clinical progression, and four of five receiving bevacizumab rechallenge had lpartial response. CONCLUSION: Single-agent bevacizumab is efficacious in the management of recurrent or refractory pediatric LGG with radiographic and clinical responses similar to those reported for bevacizumab-based therapies.

Recurrent pediatric central nervous system low-grade gliomas: the role of surveillance neuroimaging in asymptomatic children.

OBJECT: Pediatric low-grade glioma (LGG) is the most common brain tumor of childhood. Except for the known association of gross-total resection and improved survival rates, relatively little is known about the clinical and radiographic predictors of recurrent disease and the optimal frequency of surveillance MRI. The authors sought to determine the clinical and radiographic features associated with recurrent or progressive disease in a single-institutional series of children diagnosed with primary CNS LGG. METHODS: The authors performed a retrospective analysis of data obtained in 102 consecutive patients diagnosed at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego between 1994 and 2010 with a biopsy-proven LGG exclusive of a diagnosis of neurofibromatosis. Tumor location, patient age, sex, and symptomatology were correlated with tumor progression or recurrence. Magnetic resonance imaging characteristics and neuroimaging surveillance frequency were analyzed in those children with progressive or recurrent disease. RESULTS: Forty-six of 102 children diagnosed with an LGG had evidence of recurrent or progressive disease between 2 months and 11 years (mean 27.3 months) after diagnosis. In the larger group of 102 children, gross-total resection was associated with improved progression-free survival (p = 0.012). The location of tumor (p = 0.26), age at diagnosis (p = 0.69), duration of symptoms (p = 0.72), histological subtype (p = 0.74), sex (p = 0.53), or specific chemotherapeutic treatment regimen (p = 0.24) was not associated with tumor progression or recurrence. Sixty-four percent of children with recurrent or progressive disease were asymptomatic, and recurrence was diagnosed by surveillance MRI alone. All children less than 2 years of age in whom the tumor was diagnosed were asymptomatic at the time of progression (p = 0.04). Thirteen percent (6 of 46) of the children had disease recurrence 5 years after initial diagnosis; all of them had undergone an initial subtotal resection. Tumor progression was associated with either homogeneous or patchy T1-weighted post-Gd administration MRI enhancement in 94% of the cases (p = 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Children diagnosed with recurrent LGG may be asymptomatic at the time of recurrence. The authors' findings support the need for routine neuroimaging in a subset of children with LGGs, even when gross-total resection has been achieved, up to 5 years postdiagnosis. The authors found that T1-weighted MR images obtained before and after Gd administration alone may be sufficient to diagnose LGG recurrence and may represent an effective strategy worthy of further validation in a larger multiinstitutional cohort.