New brain tumor drug hits market 16 years after Duke neurosurgeon’s discovery
DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) — It’s a discovery Dr. Darrell Bigner has never forgotten.
“I’m more excited about this than virtually anything in my entire 50-to-60-year career working on brain tumors,” said Bigner, who amongst several titles serves as the Chief of the Division of Experimental Pathology at The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke.
In 2008, Dr. Bigner was working alongside a team of doctors from Johns Hopkins University began sequencing genes in brain tumor tissues that had been collected over decades.
“What we found was what’s called a point mutation in this one gene that was never suspected to be involved in cancer before,” said Bigner, referring to isocitrate dehydrogenase.
Based on the discovery, Duke and Johns Hopkins provided a license allowing a company to develop the treatment. Ultimately, it led to the creation of vorasidenib, marketed as Voranigo, made by Servier Pharmaceuticals.
