Objective: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most frequent, aggressive and incurable central nervous system (CNS) tumor. Despite conventional treatments such as surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, there is no definite treatment for this disease. In recent years, temsirolimus has been evaluated in clinical studies as a suggested treatment for GBM.
Materials and Methods: A review of literature within PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar has been conducted through clinical studies, which assessed temsirolimus in GBM patients, up to July 2016. In this regard, the studies that met the inclusion/exclusion criteria were selected. The common information of the studies was categorized in 2 tables; one for demographic information, therapy characteristics and response rate and other table for temsirolimus safety profile in GBM patients. Further information was noted in separated topics.
Results: Total 103 citations were collected; after elimination of duplicate and applying inclusion/exclusion criteria, 9 citations selected. From overall 292 enrolled patients, no complete response was found. Treatment was well tolerated except in combining with targeted therapies; overall survival and Progression Free survival cannot show superiority to standard treatment as well.
Conclusions: The present study shows that insufficient concentration of temsirolimus in the CNS, escape metabolism pathways in tumor cells and also dose reduction in combination therapy led to the ineffectiveness of the treatment. In addition, concomitant use of agents that can improve the availability of temsirolimus and block parallel pathway of malignant cell metabolism was noted in most of the studies as future perspective.