Emerging and investigational targeted chemotherapy and immunotherapy agents for metastatic brain tumors

Overall survival among patients with intracranial metastatic disease remains poor despite standard surgery and radiation, highlighting a need for advancement in the realm of systemic therapies

Targeted therapies, those that have specificity for key receptors or intracellular pathways involved in tumorigenesis, afford high anti-tumor activity with more limited side-effects than cytotoxic agents

Tumor resistance to current standard therapies poses a substantial barrier to cure, but a variety of agents are under investigation that have the ability to overcome resistance-causing mutations

Immunotherapeutic agents, such as checkpoint inhibitors, will likely pla…