Diagnosis and Management of Glioblastoma: A Comprehensive Perspective

Abstract

Glioblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor in adults. The current management relies on surgical resection and adjuvant radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Despite advances in our understanding of glioblastoma onset, we are still faced with an increased incidence, an altered quality of life and a poor prognosis, its relapse and a median overall survival of 15 months. For the past few years, the understanding of glioblastoma physiopathology has experienced an exponential acceleration and yielded significant insights and new treatments perspectives. In this review, through an original R-based literature analysis, we summarize the clinical presentation, current standards of care and outcomes in patients diagnosed with glioblastoma. We also present the recent advances and perspectives regarding pathophysiological bases as well as new therapeutic approaches such as cancer vaccination and personalized treatments.

Keywords: glioblastoma; molecular pathology; omics; pathogenesis; personalized therapies.

Figure 4

Overview of the main driving omics technologies and therapeutic perspectives for glioblastoma in the precision medicine era. This figure has been created with BioRender.com (accessed on 9 March 2021).

Figure 1

Topic representation of the included literature related to glioblastoma. The figure highlights twenty-seven clusters.

Figure 2

Overview of the main reported clinical features in glioblastomas.

Figure 3

Integrative visualization summary of main clinical symptoms and signs and their interactions with radiology, biology and treatment features. The box and annotation sizes are proportional to the item frequency. Clinical: blue, Biology: purple, Radiology: green, Treatment: orange.