Brain tumor
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive (grade IV) and most common form of a malignant brain tumor. Even when aggressive multimodality therapy consisting of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgical excision is used, median survival is only 12–17 months. Standard therapy for glioblastoma multiforme consists of maximal surgical resection of the tumor, followed by radiotherapy between two and four weeks after the surgical procedure to remove the cancer, then by chemotherapy, such as temozolomide. Most patients with glioblastoma take a corticosteroid, typically dexamethasone, during their illness to relieve symptoms. Experimental treatments include targeted therapy, gamma knife radiosurgery, boron neutron capture therapy and gene therapy.
Acute megakaryoblastic leukemia
The 5-year event free survival, disease-free survival, and overall survival rate in the phase 3 clinical study in DS-AMKL were 79, 89, 84 percent, respectively.L Other studies that use a treatment regimen similar to that used in the phase 3 clinical study report overall survival rates of ~80% and long-term survivals of 74-91%. However, DS-AMKL patients who relapse following chemotherapy have a far poorer outlook with 3 year overall survival rate in one study of only 26%. There also appears to be little role for stem cell transplantation in DS-AMKL given the success of initial chemotherapy and the relatively poor results in DS-AMKL patients given this transplantation.