After being given months to dwell following a 2021 analysis of glioblastoma, Kyle Donahue enrolled in a groundbreaking scientific trial at Brigham and Girls’s Hospital in Massachusetts, and is now a five-year survivor of mind most cancers.
CURE sat down for interviews with Kyle Donahue and her husband, Jim, in addition to Dr. E. Antonio Chiocca, Chair of Brigham’s Division of Neurosurgery and lead researcher on the scientific trial.
In a information launched in October 2025, Candel Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical firm, introduced interim information from the continuing part 1b scientific trial of CAN-3110 (linoserpaturev) in recurrent glioblastoma, which was additionally printed within the journal Science Translational Drugs.
Within the first installment of a multi-part collection, CURE sat down with Chiocca to debate the scientific trial that Kyle Donahue enrolled in, and to find out how CAN-3110 works to deal with glioblastoma.
Transcript
CURE: After surgical procedure, what was Kyle’s path to this scientific trial?
Chiocca: She underwent the common radiation, chemotherapy therapies, after which it regarded like she recurred, the tumor got here again, and that is when she entered our scientific trial.
Are you able to please describe what the scientific trial was investigating?
That is the scientific trial of our oncolytic biologic and it is mainly primarily based on a virus. It is primarily based on the herpes virus, which causes the widespread chilly sore, however we engineered within the lab so that it’ll notably goal solely tumor cells within the mind and kill them.
Are you able to inform me extra about that?
So, the best way this works is the virus, by killing the tumor cells within the mind, units up an inflammatory response. The issue with these tumors is that they evade the immune system, so it units up an inflammatory response, and that tends to get up our personal immune cells to come back in and attempt to do away with the tumor. And by doing that, by doing this inflammatory response, by eliminating the tumor, it is virtually like a vaccine units up a sturdy, long-term response.
Now, the layperson’s approach of describing this, that I all the time describe to sufferers, is to think about your mind as your property. Consider these tumors as a thief that comes into your room and disables the alarm. Due to this fact, the police have no idea that the thief is within the mind, as in your police are literally your immune cells. These are the cells of your immune system that reject pathogens like viruses and tumors. However the thief, the tumor, has mainly disabled the alarm. So now, we will, once we inject the virus, consider the virus because the alarm going off. Perhaps it is your neighbor that calls the police and says there’s any person there. So that is what the virus is. It form of like makes the alarm go off within the tumor, and rapidly, your immune cells get up and say, “Oh, wow, there is a thief. Let’s go in there and let’s scour the mind to search out the thief.” And that is what these T cells, these immune cells, do. They arrive in and so they discover these viruses which have contaminated tumor cells, and as they wipe these out, in addition they begin wiping out different tumor cells.
Transcript has been edited for readability and conciseness.
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