Drug therapy discovered at MCG being used to treat rare form of brain cancer in children
The therapy is a drug called Indoximod that blocks an enzyme called indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase or IDO for short. Its role was first discovered at MCG in 1998 and the principal investigator on the trial, Dr. Ted Johnson, was part of the team at MCG that first wrote about the way tumors manipulate the enzyme to evade the body’s immune system. The drug is already being used to treat 42 children who have brain tumors that resisted other treatments or reoccurred but only recently has the clinical trial opened up a new arm to treat children with Kaiden’s cancer.