Brain cancer is a formidable challenge for drug development, and drugs derived from many cutting-edge technologies are being tested in clinical trials. We manually characterized 981 clinical trials on brain tumors that were registered in ClinicalTrials.gov from 2010 to 2020. We identified 582 unique therapeutic entities targeting 581 unique drug targets and 557 unique treatment combinations involving drugs. We performed the classification of both the drugs and drug targets based on pharmacological and structural classifications. Our analysis demonstrates a large diversity of agents and targets. Currently, we identified 32 different pharmacological directions for therapies that are based on 42 structural classes of agents. Our analysis shows that kinase inhibitors, chemotherapeutic agents, and cancer vaccines are the three most common classes of agents identified in trials. Agents in clinical trials demonstrated uneven distribution in combination approaches; chemotherapy agents, proteasome inhibitors, and immune modulators frequently appeared in combinations, whereas kinase inhibitors, modified immune effector cells did not as was shown by combination networks and descriptive statistics. This analysis provides an extensive overview of the drug discovery field in brain cancer, shifts that have been happening in recent years, and challenges that are likely to come.

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脑癌药物发现：临床试验、药物类别、靶点和组合疗法

脑癌是药物开发的一项艰巨挑战，来自许多尖端技术的药物正在临床试验中进行测试。我们手动表征了 2010 年至 2020 年在 ClinicalTrials.gov 注册的 981 项脑肿瘤临床试验。我们确定了 582 个独特的治疗实体，针对 581 个独特的药物靶点和 557 个涉及药物的独特治疗组合。我们根据药理学和结构分类对药物和药物靶点进行了分类。我们的分析表明代理和目标的多样性。目前，我们基于 42 种结构类别的药物确定了 32 种不同的治疗药理学方向。我们的分析表明激酶抑制剂、化疗剂、和癌症疫苗是试验中确定的三类最常见的药物。临床试验中的药剂在联合用药中表现出不均匀分布；化疗剂、蛋白酶体抑制剂和免疫调节剂经常以组合形式出现，而激酶抑制剂、修饰的免疫效应细胞则没有，如组合网络和描述性统计所示。该分析对脑癌药物发现领域、近年来发生的变化以及可能出现的挑战提供了广泛的概述。组合网络和描述性统计表明，修饰的免疫效应细胞并没有。该分析对脑癌药物发现领域、近年来发生的变化以及可能出现的挑战提供了广泛的概述。组合网络和描述性统计表明，修饰的免疫效应细胞并没有。该分析对脑癌药物发现领域、近年来发生的变化以及可能出现的挑战提供了广泛的概述。