Initial report of a clinical trial evaluating the safety and efficiency of neoadjuvant camrelizumab and apatinib in patients with recurrent high-grade gliomas: A prospective, phase II, single-arm study

Background and Aim: High-grade glioma is the most common malignant primary brain tumor in the central nervous system. Multiple strategies such as surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy have been used, but the prognosis of patients with high-grade glioma remains poor. No standard treatment exists for recurrent gliomas; however, combination therapies of programmed cell death protein 1 blockades with antiangiogenic agents have demonstrated promising effects in different solid tumors. Therefore, since the end of 2020, a clinical trial designed to evaluate the safety and efficiency of neoadjuvant therapy using camrelizumab and apatinib in patients with recurrent high-grade gliomas has been carried out in our institution. Methods/Design: In this prospective, Phase II, single-arm study, patients with recurrent high-grade gliomas will receive single-dose intravenous injection of camrelizumab (200 mg) and daily oral administration of apatinib (250 mg/day for 7 days) 14 days before reoperation for tumor resection. Sequential therapy will begin 2 weeks after surgery with the biweekly injection of camrelizumab and 4 weeks after surgery with the daily administration of apatinib. Treatment of camrelizumab and apatinib will be continued until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity or death. The primary outcome measure will be the median overall survival rate. Secondary outcome measures will include progression-free survival rate at 6 months and at 12 months and other measures. The trial is planned to enroll 30 patients. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center (Guangzhou, China; approval No. SL-B2020-149-01) on July 27, 2020. Results and Conclusions: Although an evaluation is still impossible to be conducted yet, 11 patients had been enrolled by the end of January 2022. Some patients have shown a promising outcome. These preliminary data suggest that this study would be worthwhile. We hope that this study will provide scientific evidence to better care of patients with recurrent high-grade glioma. Trial registration: This study was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov under identifier NCT04588987 on October 19, 2020.