Treatment of high-grade glioma with radiolabeled peptides

The management of high-grade glioma (HGG) patients in clinical routine represents a challenging task. HGG has a poor prognosis because of early recurrence or therapy-refractory disease following first-line standard therapy, which includes a multidisciplinary approach involving radical surgical resection followed by external beam radiation therapy in combination with chemotherapy. Glioma cells are known to express specific receptors or glycoproteins on their surface which can be used as biological targets for treatment. The application of radiopharmaceuticals consisting of a targeting and an effector domain has led to the introduction of new treatment approaches, aiming at a tumor-specific treatment sparing normal brain tissue. One of these new modalities is the peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT). Peptides labeled with radioactive nuclides can bind directly to the tumor cells and deliver high doses of radioactivity directly to the tumor tissue. This article reviews the literature for PRRT in HGG.