An experimental oral drug significantly delayed the growth of a malignant brain tumor, a major breakthrough in treating brain cancers that have progressed poorly for decades and have a high rate of disability and early death.

showed study Patients with grade 2 gliomas who took vorazidenib from Servier Pharmaceuticals after surgery and before chemotherapy or radiation therapy reported significant improvement Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

According to the study, the growth and development of cancer cells was twice as delayed compared to patients who did not take this drug.

By delaying tumor growth, the study showed the drug also extended the time patients, who are often healthy young adults, had to wait before starting chemotherapy and radiation.

Therefore, the study suggests that the drug may help delay cognitive decline, memory loss, and other side effects that can accompany metastatic brain cancer.

The drug, the study showed, acts as an inhibitor of two enzymes, IDH1 and IDH2, which show early activity in mutant IDH gliomas, and the drug penetrates the tumor site through the blood-brain barrier.

According to the study, gliomas are the most common malignant primary brain tumors in adults and are classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) into different tumor subtypes and tumor grades according to different histological and molecular features.

The study showed that IDH1 and IDH2 enzymes were present in almost all metastatic grade II gliomas in adults.

According to the study, more than 80 percent of grade II glioma patients have cancers with mutations in a gene called IDH that promotes tumor growth.

The study shows that most drugs cannot cross the protective layer of vessels and tissues called the blood-brain barrier, and the small number of affected patients makes it difficult to conduct large trials.

In the trial, 331 patients with malignant grade II glioma had some residual tumor tissue or relapsed after surgery. Patients from 77 health centers in 10 countries participated.

About 168 patients took the drug as a daily pill, while about 163 patients took a placebo.

Patients who took the experimental drug had a median cancer-free survival of 28 months, compared with 11 months for patients who took a placebo.

Within two years, the probability of not needing additional treatment was about 83 percent for patients taking the drug, compared to 27 percent for patients taking the placebo.

To treat grade II gliomas, doctors typically surgically remove as much of the cancer as possible, the study indicates. Then they monitor the growth of the tumors or treat them with chemotherapy and radiation, but these tumors are incurable and sometimes come back after a few years.