Glioblastoma is most commonly a primary brain tumor and the utmost malignant one, with a survival rate of approximately 12–18 months. Glioblastoma is highly heterogeneous, demonstrating that different types of cells from the same tumor can manifest distinct gene expression patterns and biological behaviors. Conventional therapies such as temozolomide, radiation, and surgery have limitations. As of now, there is no cure for glioblastoma. Alternative treatment methods to eradicate glioblastoma are discussed in this review, including targeted therapies to PI3K, NFKβ, JAK-STAT, CK2, WNT, NOTCH, Hedgehog, and TGFβ pathways. The highly novel application of oncolytic viruses and nanomaterials in combating glioblastoma are also discussed. Despite scores of clinical trials for glioblastoma, the prognosis remains poor. Progress in breaching the blood–brain barrier with nanomaterials and novel avenues for targeted and combination treatments hold promise for the future development of efficacious glioblastoma therapies.

In this review, we discuss how mutations in glioma are associated with prognosis and treatment efficacy. A fascinating characteristic of glioma and all cancers is that while common growth and developmental pathways are altered, the characteristic mutations are distinct depending on the specific type of tumor with concomitant prognoses. Next-generation sequencing, precision medicine, and artificial intelligence are boosting the employment of molecular biomarkers in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Understanding the biological underpinnings of distinct mutations on critical signaling pathways is crucial for developing novel therapies for glioma.

Clinical outcomes for brain cancer are often poor because the blood–brain/tumor barrier hinders effective drug delivery to malignant tissue. Glioblastoma, the most common primary brain malignancy in adults, has an average survival of approximately fourteen months. Here, we discuss novel strategies that our research group and others are developing to deliver chemotherapy to the brain via the nasal cavity. Although significant hurdles remain, intranasal delivery holds substantial promise for improving outcomes for patients with brain cancer. Intranasal delivery is noninvasive, permits repeated dosing, and has been shown to enable direct nose-to-brain transport that bypasses the blood–brain barrier. Challenges such as accurately targeting drugs to the appropriate region of the nasal cavity at therapeutically relevant doses, while maintaining reproducibility, make this cutting-edge approach a regulatory challenge. The prolonged path to clinical translation discourages many researchers from pursuing this potentially life-saving strategy. Nevertheless, preclinical studies demonstrate that intranasal delivery can achieve up to ten-fold higher concentrations of select drugs in the brain. Cancer chemotherapeutics span a wide range of molecular formats, from small molecules to 150-kilodalton antibodies. Accordingly, delivery strategies must be carefully matched to the molecular properties of each therapeutic. Here, we focus on the intranasal delivery of small molecule inhibitors using nanomaterial-based platforms, including aerosols, lipids, gold nanoparticles, gels, emulsions, fibers, and their combinations. Ultimately, we hope that intranasal delivery approaches will be translated to provide patients with better therapeutic outcomes.

Pancreatic cancer (PanCa) is one of the most aggressive forms of cancer and its incidence rate is continuously increasing every year. It is expected that by 2030, PanCa will become the 2^nd leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States due to the lack of early diagnosis and extremely poor survival. Despite great advancements in biomedical research, there are very limited early diagnostic modalities available for the early detection of PanCa. Thus, understanding of disease biology and identification of newer diagnostic and therapeutic modalities are high priority. Herein, we have utilized high dimensional omics data along with some wet laboratory experiments to decipher the expression level of hormone receptor interactor 13 (TRIP13) in various pathological staging including functional enrichment analysis. The functional enrichment analyses specifically suggest that TRIP13 and its related oncogenic network genes are involved in very important patho-physiological pathways. These analyses are supported by qPCR, immunoblotting and IHC analysis. Based on our study we proposed TRIP13 as a novel molecular target for PanCa diagnosis and therapeutic interventions. Overall, we have demonstrated a crucial role of TRIP13 in pathogenic events and progression of PanCa through applied integrated computational biology approaches.

Clinical outcomes for brain cancer are often poor because the blood–brain/tumor barrier hinders effective drug delivery to malignant tissue. Glioblastoma, the most common primary brain malignancy in adults, has an average survival of approximately fourteen months [1]. Here, we discuss novel strategies that our research group and others are developing to deliver chemotherapy to the brain via the nasal cavity. Although significant hurdles remain, intranasal delivery holds substantial promise for improving outcomes for patients with brain cancer. Intranasal delivery is non‑invasive, permits repeated dosing, and has been shown to enable direct nose‑to‑brain transport that bypasses the blood–brain barrier. Challenges such as accurately targeting drugs to the appropriate region of the nasal cavity at therapeutically relevant doses, while maintaining reproducibility, make this cutting-edge approach a regulatory challenge. The prolonged path to clinical translation discourages many researchers from pursuing this potentially life‑saving strategy. Nevertheless, preclinical studies demonstrate that intranasal delivery can achieve up to ten‑fold higher concentrations of select drugs in the brain [2]. Cancer chemotherapeutics span a wide range of molecular formats, from small molecules to 150‑kilodalton antibodies. Accordingly, delivery strategies must be carefully matched to the molecular properties of each therapeutic. Here, we focus on the intranasal delivery of small‑molecule inhibitors using nanomaterial‑based platforms, including aerosols, lipids, gold nanoparticles, gels, emulsions, fibers, and their combinations. Ultimately, we hope that intranasal delivery approaches will be translated to provide patients with better therapeutic outcomes.