Abstract
Diffuse midline glioma (DMG) is a pediatric brain cancer that has a dismal prognosis with limited treatment options. We present the treatment course and outcome of an adolescent male diagnosed with a thalamic DMG carrying a histone H3.3 K27M (H3K27M) alteration. Tumor biopsies were taken at diagnosis for histological analysis, molecular profiling, and ex vivo drug sensitivity testing (DST). Seven months after diagnosis, the patient had recurrent/progressive disease after radiotherapy and an ineffective molecular-guided therapy based on tumor molecular profiling. The patient then started a novel functional precision medicine (FPM)-guided two-drug combination of disulfiram, based on the DST results of this drug on the patient’s tumor cells obtained at diagnosis, and ONC 201, the only drug that has advanced to a phase III clinical trial for H3K27M-DMG. Neuroimaging demonstrated a treatment response, and the patient lived for fifteen months after starting this personalized therapy. Disulfiram was discontinued after three months due to significant peripheral neuropathy. Our case describes the feasibility and limitations of using DST of patient-derived tumor cells to identify potentially effective personalized and novel therapies for DMG, which should be evaluated for efficacy and safety in formal N-of-1 clinical trials settings. We discuss the benefits and risks of this approach, particularly considering its use in children, adolescents, and young adults with pediatric brain cancers.
Introduction
Diffuse midline glioma (DMG) is a high-grade glioma that occurs mainly in children and more rarely in adults. It is the deadliest brain cancer in children and young adults with a life expectancy of about a year after diagnosis (), although adults have a significantly longer life expectancy (, ). DMG is molecularly defined by a lysine-27 to methionine mutation in histone H3 (H3K27M) that leads to global hypomethylation of this residue and consequent epigenetic changes in gene expression patterns that are likely to promote oncogenesis (, ). The tumors occur within deep midline regions of the brain and spinal cord and are infiltrative in nature such that surgical resection is risky and often ineffective. There are no FDA-approved therapies and patient outcomes have not improved over decades. Radiation is the only standard of care therapy and is merely palliative, and clinical trials of chemotherapeutic and targeted agents after radiotherapy have been largely ineffective. Upon tumor progression, DMG patients have even fewer treatment options and a median life expectancy of only three months if no further treatments are pursued (, ).
Functional precision medicine (FPM) is a promising approach that utilizes drug sensitivity testing (DST) of patient-derived tumor cells either alone or in combination with molecular profiling as part of multi-omics testing to predict effective individualized treatment options (–). However, DST has not been widely applied to children and adolescents with pediatric brain cancer. This case describes an adolescent DMG patient whose tumor cells were subjected to ex vivo DST at diagnosis. Seven months later at the time of tumor progression, the patient started a personalized and experimental two-drug combination therapy of disulfiram, based on the DST results of this drug, and ONC201 (dordaviprone), the only drug that has advanced to a phase III clinical trial for H3K27M-DMG (). This FPM-based therapy led to a tumor regression and the patient survived for 15 months after starting this treatment and for 22 months after diagnosis, although it also induced a peripheral neuropathy that reduced his quality of life and led to discontinuation of therapy. Our case highlights the challenges and opportunities of DST and serves as a basis for potential FPM-based clinical trials for patients with DMG.
Case description
An adolescent male presented with a 1-month history of fatigue and intractable vomiting. Examination was significant for obtundation, and right hemiparesis and neuroimaging revealed a left thalamic neoplasm with obstructive hydrocephalus and herniation. He underwent emergent external ventricular drain placement, fenestration of the septum pellucidum, and tumor biopsy. Histological staining and molecular analysis of the biopsies revealed the presence of the H3F3A K27M mutation along with mutations in TP53 (with accompanying loss of heterozygosity), PIK3CA, and a SMARCE1 mutation that was sub clonal (Table 1). Separately, the biopsied tumor cells were subjected to a feasibility study featuring multi-omics analysis, DNA methylation profiling, immunogenic potential analysis, and ex vivo DST with a customized panel of 175 FDA approved and investigational cancer drugs (15; John R. Crawford and Robert Wechsler-Reya, manuscript in preparation) at a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)-certified laboratory at the University of Washington (). Consistent with previously reported DST results on patient-derived DMG tumor cells, drugs with the most potency in viability assays included proteasome inhibitors such as marizomib and histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors such as panobinostat (, ). Disulfiram also caused significant lethality of tumor cells, with an IC50 of 71 nanomolar and a tumor cell viability of just 2% at the maximal dose. Figure 1 shows the DST results of marizomib, as well as the results for other drugs that the patient used with his treatment plan. The Supplementary Table lists the ex vivo DST results for all the drugs that were evaluated.
Table 1
| Gene/Protein Variant | Classification | Mutant Allele Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| H3F3A/H3.3-K27M (H3K27M) | Pathogenic | 31% |
| PIK3CA/PI3K-E545G | Pathogenic | 44% |
| TP53/p53-D281G | Pathogenic | 72% |
| SMARCE1/BAF57-E156* | Possibly Pathogenic | 10% (subclonal) |
Tumor molecular analysis, somatic alterations.
Variants are listed as the gene name followed by the protein name and amino acid alteration. For TP53, there was an accompanying loss of the other allele due to copy-neutral loss of heterozygosity of chromosome 17. “*” indicates that a stop codon was produced by the mutation leading to truncation of the protein.
Figure 1
Figure 2 shows the course of treatment for the patient along with a graph of the area of the primary thalamic tumor for each magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and the timing of molecular profiling and DST (lower left). Figure 3 presents representative post-gadolinium T1-weighted MRI images of the primary thalamic DMG tumor, shown in Figure 3A at diagnosis. Standard of care radiation therapy (proton therapy of 60 Gy over 30 cycles) from days 22–63 led to a continual reduction in tumor area based on imaging on days 88 and 149 (Figures 2, 3B, C). While in radiotherapy, the patient and his family expressed an interest in drug combination therapies, and since there are no FDA-approved therapies for DMG they were informed of the benefits and risks of using novel drug combinations, and they provided consent to use a molecular-guided combination drug therapy based on tumor molecular profiling obtained at diagnosis. On day 102 the patient started an individualized therapy consisting of panobinostat, everolimus, temozolomide, and hydroxychloroquine. An MRI on day 203 showed tumor progression (Figure 3D) and hence this combination therapy was deemed ineffective and was discontinued after 3.5 months.
Figure 2

Treatment course and thalamic DMG tumor area measurements showing tumor regression with radiation therapy and with the FPM therapy of disulfiram and ONC201. The graph plots the measured area of the primary thalamic DMG tumor from each MRI. Above the graph, the time periods for the different treatments are shown in black boxes. Disulfiram was used at 250 mg QD, except during a time period at 250 mg BID (gray box). Surgeries are indicated by diamonds: blue diamond, external shunt placement and septostomy (day 1); yellow diamond, external shunt removal and third ventriculostomy (day 7); red diamond, internal shunt placement and septostomy (day 226). The lower left of the graph shows a timeline from tumor biopsy on the day 7 surgery to profiling including DST. The time period of the peripheral neuropathy is indicated as an open box. Standard of care radiation therapy led to tumor regression, observed as a reduction in tumor area on days 88 and 149. Following radiation therapy, an ineffective molecular-guided therapy with the drug combination temozolomide, panobinostat, everolimus, and hydroxychloroquine led to tumor progression, observed as an increase in tumor area on days 203 and 225. The FPM therapy of disulfiram alone, from days 210-224, disulfiram and ONC201, from days 258-333, and ONC201 alone led to a dramatic decrease in tumor area. The patient died on day 677 from treatment-resistant secondary tumors that were first visualized on day 255.
Figure 3

MRI images showing primary DMG tumor regression during and after FPM therapy with disulfiram and ONC201. T1-post gadolinium axial images are shown from the following days: (A) day 2; (B) day 88; (C) day 149; (D) day 203; (E) day 225; (F) day 255; (G) day 288; (H) day 351; (I) day 409; and (J) day 469. In J, the location of the primary tumor is within the yellow box, and secondary tumors are evident above the location of the primary tumor.
Based on the success of a feasibility study (
The patient then received the combination of disulfiram and German-sourced ONC201 starting on day 258. ONC201 was administered once per week at 680 mg, corresponding to 8.5 mg per kilogram of body weight. Disulfiram was initially administered at 250 mg QD for the first month, then increased to 250 mg twice per day (BID) for one month consistent with the dosing used in clinical trials for glioblastoma (
The disulfiram-ONC201 combination therapy was stopped due to the onset of peripheral neuropathy featuring intense neuropathic pain in the feet and distal motor weakness/areflexia which led to inability to ambulate and subsequent hospitalization. MRI spine did not show any evidence of nerve root enhancement or cord signal abnormality. A lumbar puncture to assess for albuminocytologic dissociation was recommended but declined and the patient was treated for symptomatic neuropathic pain management and physical therapy. The painful neuropathy resolved after three months; however, the patient never regained his ability to ambulate due to persistent bilateral foot drop. After resolution of the neuropathy on day 433, the patient resumed ONC201 alone without disulfiram, and the peripheral neuropathy did not recur. Tumor progression appeared originating from the frontal horns of the right and left ventricles (first noticeable on day 225, Figure 3F, and prominent on day 469, Figure 3J) and the left cerebellar peduncle. The primary thalamic tumor never recurred, and the patient died of disease on day 677.
Discussion
Our case study demonstrates feasibility of ex vivo DST of the tumor cells from a DMG patient obtained at diagnosis, and a favorable treatment response of a primary thalamic DMG and extended survival of the patient to an off-trial N-of-1 FPM salvage therapy, consisting of a two-drug combination of disulfiram, a repurposed cancer drug (
The FPM therapy was discontinued after three months due to peripheral neuropathy that was likely caused by disulfiram (
Ex vivo DST of the patient’s tumor cells was part of a feasibility study for pediatric brain cancer patients that also included several multi-omics tumor profiling methods. Reliable DST results were obtained within one week, and all tumor profiling results were obtained within an average time of three weeks after tumor biopsy (15, Figure 2, lower left). Subsequently, these profiling methods have been used in an FPM clinical trial for patients with recurrent medulloblastoma (NCT05057702, PNOC027). Our patient’s tumor cells, in contrast to this clinical trial, were profiled just after diagnosis, and the DST results were not used to inform the molecular-guided therapy that the patient tried after surgery and standard of care radiotherapy. Therefore, it is important to note that the FPM therapy for this patient was initiated seven months after DST of the patient’s biopsied tumor cells and after prior therapies. Due to extensive tumor heterogeneity and adaptive resistance of high-grade gliomas, it is likely that time and prior therapies led to molecular changes in the tumor and hence resistance of the secondary tumors to the FPM therapy (
One must interpret the favorable treatment response with caution as we cannot know whether it was due to disulfiram, ONC201, or the drug combination. ONC201 has demonstrated promising early-stage clinical results including durable responses in a few individuals (
Another limitation of this case report is extrapolating ex vivo DST results to in vivo drug efficacy. In this regard, DMG is challenging because there are no known effective individual or combination drug therapies, and drugs used for treating DMG also need to be brain penetrant. A starting point is using the drug potencies from ex vivo DST as a benchmark for potentially efficacious drug exposure. For example, ex vivo disulfiram had a high killing potency (IC50) of 0.071 μM against the patient’s tumor cells (Figure 1), and steady state plasma concentrations of disulfiram in patients reach levels that are up to ten times higher (46), suggesting that efficacious concentrations disulfiram could be achieved for this patient. Any brain penetrant drug with these features could be a candidate for an FPM therapy, and disulfiram was selected as a personalized therapy in part due to clinical trials in adult glioma that were ongoing at the time. However, there are other in vivo drug parameters to consider for potential efficacy. Disulfiram may have unfavorable metabolism and bioavailability that limits its efficacy (46, 47), perhaps explaining why disulfiram has failed in clinical trials for glioblastoma (
Prior to the FPM therapy, the patient used an individualized molecular-guided therapy based on tumor genetic profiling (Table 1) consisting of temozolomide, panobinostat, everolimus, and hydroxychloroquine. At the time, everolimus and panobinostat were recommended for treating PIK3CA-mutated H3K27M-DMG (
Another limitation to precision medicine for pediatric oncology patients is that childhood tumors have a 14-fold lower somatic mutation rate and hence fewer actionable mutations than adult cancers (55, 56). For this patient, H3K27M and TP53 mutations, which occur in 60% of H3K27M-DMG patients, are not directly actionable, while PI3KCA, which occurs in 15-20% of all DMG patients (57–59) and encodes phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), was the only actionable mutation. However, none of the FDA-approved PI3K inhibitors are brain-penetrant, and the investigational brain-penetrant inhibitor paxalisib was not available at the time. But even for adult cancer patients in large precision medicine studies, only 10% had beneficial treatment responses to personalized therapies based on tumor molecular profiling (60, 61). Similarly, a trial using molecular-guided therapies on nineteen DMG patients showed no clinical benefit (62). In contrast, certain FPM clinical trials yielded much better results. For example, 92% of patients who received personalized therapies informed by DST achieved stable disease or better (
Our case report promotes the wider use of DST for patients with DMG and other childhood brain cancers preferably in a clinical trial setting. For patients with DMG that have no FDA-approved treatment options, DST can be used to identify potentially effective investigational drugs. FPM for such patients should be used in N-of-1 clinical trials to match the results with the most appropriate therapy (63–65). The drugs used in DST should also be optimized for each tumor type. For example, for brain cancers, all brain-penetrant FDA-approved, investigational, and repurposed drugs should be included in the drug screen. Furthermore, various relevant drug combinations should also be evaluated in DST, including drug combinations in current clinical trials (e.g. ONC201 combined with paxalisib for DMG, clinical trial NCT05009992). FPM clinical trials are typically performed for patients with relapsed or progressive disease. However, for DMG patients we also support the use of DST upon initial biopsy or tumor resection, as was done for the patient in this study, to define FPM therapies for newly diagnosed patients. The inclusion of repurposed drugs such as disulfiram is important because these drugs are available and often inexpensive, thereby providing accessible off-label treatment options (66). However, in some cases these may be associated with significant dose limiting side effects as seen in our patient.
An expanded use of DST may provide valuable information that may lead to rapid identification of promising new therapies that would otherwise not be identified through conventional molecular tumor analysis. DST may be an option for pediatric brain tumors such as ependymoma that lack somatic driver mutations or for tumors such as DMG where there is no curative therapy. While our reported case demonstrates the feasibility of ex vivo DST in a single patient, many questions remain regarding the generalizability and mechanistic validation of the DST results. Ex-vivo testing of drug combinations from patient derived tumor cells is an attractive area of future study, but novel personalized combination therapies informed by ex vivo DST may also be associated with significant adverse events as was the case in our patient. DST together with pharmacologic predictive data of CNS penetrability (when available) and drug safety information should be explored further in the clinical trial setting.
Statements
Data availability statement
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
Ethics statement
The studies involving humans were approved by Rady Children’s Hospital Institutional Review Board. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent for participation in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardians/next of kin. Written informed consent was obtained from the minor(s)’ legal guardian/next of kin for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.
Author contributions
PT: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Formal analysis. TM: Investigation, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Data curation, Writing – review & editing, Methodology. PB: Investigation, Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Formal analysis, Methodology, Validation. RW-R: Supervision, Formal analysis, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Data curation, Validation. JC: Data curation, Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Investigation, Formal analysis.
Funding
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. This work is supported by a generous endowment from the Clayes Foundation to the Research Center for Neuro-Oncology and Genomics within the Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine. Critical infrastructure for the work was supported by a generous grant from Curebound (https://www.curebound.org). RJWR’s contributions were supported by R35 NS122339 from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (RJWR), William’s Superhero Fund and the McDowell Charity Trust.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the brave patients and families for allowing the exploration of novel approaches to identify personalized therapies that may lead to clinical trials and one day cures.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The author(s) declare that no Generative AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fonc.2025.1606575/full#supplementary-material
Supplementary Table 1Summary of compounds used in the ex-vivo drug screening of DMG.
Supplementary MethodsHigh-throughput drug screening (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments–approved assay) The cell populations were analyzed after a 72-hour exposure to 5 customized drug concentrations (within the range of 5 pmol/L to 100 μmol/L) of each drug spanning 5 logs. After exposure viability was determined using CellTiter-Glo luminescent reagent (Promega) per manufacturer’s protocol, then the plates were analyzed with the EnVision Multilabel plate reader (Perkin Elmer). XLFit (IDBS), a Microsoft Excel Add-in, was used to analyze the data and generate dose–response curves based on standard 4- parameter logistic fit [i.e., fit = (A + (B/(1 + ((x/C)^D)))) where A and B equal minimum and maximum asymptotes, C equals IC50 and D equals slope]. The AUC values were calculated using the XLFit software utilizing minimum and maximum concentrations of drugs/compounds within the panel as the limits of the AUC calculation. For each plate, data were normalized to DMSO 100% viability and blank controls. The samples were not frozen but freshly, dissociated to single cell suspensions within hours from surgically removed tumors that were kept on ice prior to shipping. The drug sensitivity assay was initiated within 48 hours of surgery. Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments standards require that thawed cell line data be repeated for standardization of the assay every 6 months. The assay results were highly reproducible.
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Summary
Keywords
diffuse midline glioma, functional precision medicine, drug sensitivity testing, molecular guided therapy, pediatric brain cancer
Citation
Tan PK, Martins TJ, Becker PS, Wechsler-Reya RJ and Crawford JR (2025) Case Report: Application of ex-vivo drug sensitivity testing to identify personalized treatment options for an adolescent with diffuse midline glioma. Front. Oncol. 15:1606575. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1606575
Received
05 April 2025
Accepted
07 July 2025
Published
07 August 2025
Volume
15 - 2025
Edited by
Ashley Sloane Margol, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, United States
Reviewed by
Shwetal Mehta, Barrow Neurological Institute (BNI), United States
Evan Cantor, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, United States
Updates

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Copyright
© 2025 Tan, Martins, Becker, Wechsler-Reya and Crawford.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: John Ross Crawford, John.Crawford@choc.org
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.