Dr. E Antonio ChioccaUSA
Brigham and Women's Hospital
| 2012 to present | Chairman, Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital |
| 1982 - 1986 | Biological Sciences University of Texas, El Paso, TX |
| 1988 - 1988 | MD, PHD, Medicine University of Texas Medical School, Houston, TX (Joseph P. Stein, PhD) Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston |
| 2004 - 2012 | Neurosurgery, Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH |
Dr. Chiocca is a clinician-scientist whose research is focused on developing novel genetic therapies for malignant brain tumors. He is the current Secretary of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the President of the Society of Neurosurgeons, among other board positions.
Dr. E. Antonio (‘Nino”) Chiocca was born in the city of Padova in northeastern Italy. In 1979, he came to the USA where he attended college at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he graduated with a BS in 1982. His interest in biomedical research was solidified by an undergraduate research project that he attended at MD Anderson Hospital in the summer of 1981. He entered the MD/PhD program offered by the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. In 2004, he became the first Chairman of the newly instituted Department of Neurological Surgery at the Ohio State University Medical Center, where he held the Dardinger Family Endowed Chair in Oncological Neurosurgery. In 2012, he became the Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Brigham & Women's Hospital and the Harvey W. Cushing Professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School, funded by the Daniel E. Ponton fund.
Oncolytic Viruses to treat GBM
1109 14:00-14:10
AASNS & WANS Joint Seminar/305
INTRODUCTION: Immunotherapy failures can be due to the highly suppressive tumor microenvironment
characterizing aggressive forms of cancer, like recurrent glioblastoma (rGBM). Here, we report the results of a
“first-in-human” phase 1 trial in 41 rGBM subjects, injected with CAN-3110, an oncolytic herpes virus (oHSV).
Unlike other clinical oHSVs, CAN-3110 retains the viral neurovirulence ICP34.5 gene transcribed by a Nestin
promoter, a protein over-expressed in GBM and other invasive tumors, but not in adult brain or healthy
differentiated tissue4. These modifications confer CAN-3110 with preferential tumor replication.
METHODS: A 3+3 , dose-escalation and dose expansion phase 1 clinical trial in hmans with recurrent GBM
RESULTS: No dose-limiting toxicities were encountered. Surprisingly, positive HSV1 serology was
significantly associated with both improved survival and clearance of CAN-3110 from injected tumors. Survival
after treatment, particularly in HSV1 seropositive subjects, significantly associated with a-changes in tumor/
PBMC T cell counts and clonal diversity, b- peripheral expansion/contraction of specific T cell clonotypes, and ctumor transcriptomic signatures of immune activation.
CONCLUSION: These results provide human validation that intralesional oHSV treatment enhances
anticancer immune responses even in immunosuppressive tumor microenvironments, particularly in subjects
with cognate serology to the injected virus. This provides a biologic rationale for use of this oncolytic modality
in cancers that are otherwise unresponsive to immunotherapy (clinicaltrials.gov NCT03152318) (published in
Nature (Ling et al, 2023)
Technological and Imaging Advances in the resection of gliomas
1108 08:20-08:30
Neuro-oncology/305
Technological and Imaging Advances in the resection of gliomas