Pioneer Oncology

A Broken Clinical Trial System for the World’s Deadliest Cancers

For cancers like Glioblastoma (GBM), the most aggressive brain tumors, there has been little meaningful progress in treatment over the past 30 years. Despite standard therapies such as surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, the median survival remains just 15 months, and less than 10% of patients survive beyond five years. The challenge lies in GBM’s highly infiltrative nature, which makes complete surgical removal impossible, and the blood-brain barrier that blocks most drugs from reaching the tumor, severely limiting the effectiveness of current systemic treatments.

Most clinical trials still test one drug at a time and can take years – time that GBM patients simply don’t have. GBM AGILE which AFCR has led to build with your past support, has made progress by testing multiple treatments at once, but they only focus on later-stage trials (Phase 2/3). PIONEER Oncology is different. It brings the same multi-drug approach to early-phase trials (Phase 0 and Phase 1), helping researchers quickly see which drugs reach the brain and hit their targets. This gives patients faster access to the most promising therapies – especially in Asia, where early-stage trials are still hard to find.

These challenges are not unique to GBM. Patients with brain metastases and other central nervous system (CNS) tumors face the same scientific barriers to effective treatments and faster innovations. The current drug development system simply isn’t built to meet the urgent needs of these patients.

Many patients with deadly cancers like GBM are still waiting for better treatment options. Early-stage trials are often too slow, too expensive, and too limited. We need a faster, better way to bring new therapies to the people who need them most.