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5 treatment settings, 4 with more than one named option. Each section lays out the options the standard of care names, what each is for, the trials behind them with their recorded results, the side effects and cautions on record, and questions to ask. Built from the cancer page's standard-of-care rows; nothing here is advice for your case.
Maximal safe resection, focal radiotherapy and temozolomide during and after radiotherapy by extrapolation from adult practice; molecular profiling of every tumour.
IMRT and IGRT shape the radiation beam to the tumour's outline from multiple angles and check the patient's position with a scan before every session, so surrounding organs receive less dose. Fewer, larger doses are now standard in breast and prostate cancer, but a low-dose bath still spreads across normal tissue.
Radiation using protons, which stop inside the tumour instead of passing through, so tissue behind it gets no dose.
The only chemotherapy proven to extend life in glioblastoma, given during and after radiation. It works best when the tumour has switched off a repair gene called MGMT.
Reading chemical tags on DNA that reveal a cell's identity, used to classify brain tumours and to detect cancer in blood.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Surgery and fusion-directed therapy: larotrectinib or entrectinib for NTRK fusions, alectinib or lorlatinib for ALK or ROS1 fusions; chemotherapy to defer radiotherapy.
The first drug approved for a gene fusion regardless of where the cancer started; it works in about 75% of NTRK-fusion cancers, from infant fibrosarcoma to salivary and thyroid cancers.
Entrectinib (Rozlytrek) is a pill for NTRK-fusion cancers and ROS1 lung cancer that reaches brain metastases.
Alectinib is a well-tolerated ALK pill, standard first line for years and, since 2024, the first targeted therapy given after surgery for ALK-positive lung cancer.
An ALK inhibitor with the longest disease control ever recorded for a targeted lung cancer pill: 60% progression-free at five years.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Dabrafenib plus trametinib (paediatric high-grade glioma cohort 2023; tumour-agnostic approval for BRAF V600E solid tumours from age six).
Dabrafenib plus trametinib is the BRAF-plus-MEK pill combination, approved for BRAF V600E lung cancer and, since 2022, for any solid tumour with that mutation.
Dabrafenib (Tafinlar) is a capsule that switches off the faulty BRAF protein driving some melanomas, lung, thyroid and other cancers. It is almost always paired with trametinib.
Trametinib (Mekinist) blocks MEK, the protein one step below BRAF in the growth-signal chain. Paired with dabrafenib it treats BRAF-mutant melanoma, lung, thyroid and other cancers, including brain tumours in children.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
PD-1 blockade (nivolumab or pembrolizumab) for hypermutant tumours; germline counselling for the family.
Nivolumab was the second PD-1 blocker and is often combined with ipilimumab. Long-term data show about half of advanced melanoma patients alive at 10 years on the combination.
Pembrolizumab is a PD-1 blocking antibody approved in more than 40 settings, from melanoma and lung cancer to the first tumour-agnostic approval for mismatch-repair-deficient tumours in 2017, and before and after surgery in triple-negative breast cancer. A subcutaneous form arrived in 2025, and it is the backbone partner for ADCs and personalised neoantigen vaccines.
A test of the DNA you were born with, to find inherited risk genes such as BRCA or Lynch syndrome.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
| Side effect | Any grade | Grade 3+ |
|---|---|---|
| Colitis with ipilimumab (1+3 mg/kg) · Monotherapy pooled unless stated | 25% | 14.4% |
| Hepatitis with ipilimumab · Monotherapy pooled unless stated | 15% | 13.4% |
| Colitis · Monotherapy pooled unless stated | 2.9% | 1.7% |
| Hepatitis · Monotherapy pooled unless stated | 1.8% | 1.5% |
Rates from the label or pivotal trial as recorded on the product page; each grade 3+ figure links to its source.
| Side effect | Any grade | Grade 3+ |
|---|---|---|
| Hypothyroidism (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 8% | - |
| Pneumonitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 3.4% | - |
| Colitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 1.7% | - |
| Hepatitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 0.7% | - |
Rates from the label or pivotal trial as recorded on the product page; each grade 3+ figure links to its source.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
No standard; re-resection, re-irradiation, clinical trials including CAR-T and oncolytic virus studies.
Engineered immune cells delivered directly into the brain or spinal fluid. Some children with diffuse midline glioma, a brainstem tumour with no curative treatment, have had striking, if temporary, responses.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.