Alexander D. Barrow

Abstract Glioblastomas (GBM) are an aggressive form of brain cancer with no curative treatment options. While T cell therapies have demonstrated substantial success in combatting blood cancers, their application for solid tumours, including GBM, is hampered by the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment and scarcity of tumour antigen-specific targets. There is an urgent need to better understand the immune response to GBM to enable the development of new therapeutic approaches.

Introduction Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was diagnosed in over half a billion people and confirmed as the cause of death of over 6.3 million globally (1). These numbers however, are estimated to be heavily understated, and the approximated number of deaths caused by COVID-19 may be roughly four times higher (2).

Introduction Gliomas are the most common and aggressive primary brain tumors associated with a very poor prognosis, especially glioblastoma (GBM), with a 5-year overall survival rate below 5% (1). Conventional therapeutic strategies for GBM are unsatisfactory. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) targeting PD-1/PD-L1 alone have produced a demonstrable therapeutic benefit in several tumor types; however, their efficacy in gliomas has not been satisfactory (2, 3).