Emerging role of combination of all-trans retinoic acid and interferon-gamma as chemoimmunotherapy in the management of human glioblastoma

Glioblastoma is the most malignant and common type of brain tumor with devastating outcome. Because current treatment modalities are mostly ineffective in controlling and curing glioblastoma, new and innovative therapeutic strategies must be developed. This article describes recent advances in chemoimmunotherapy, which is combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, against glioblastoma. We provide an overview of available treatment options for glioblastomas, gaps in our knowledge of immune recognition of these malignant tumors, and chemotherapeutic and immunotherapeutic agents that need to be further explored for designing novel chemoimmunotherapeutic strategy for the management of human glioblastomas. Our recent study demonstrated that combination of the chemotherapeutic agent all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) and the immunotherapeutic agent interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) could concurrently induce differentiation, apoptotic death, and immune components in two different human glioblastoma cell lines. We propose that combination of ATRA and IFN-gamma can become an efficacious chemoimmunotherapy for the treatment of human glioblastoma.