Response of Metastatic Glioma to Vemurafenib

Extraneural metastatic disease of glioma is rare and poses unique therapeutic challenges. Increasingly, the ability to sequence genetic alterations in tumors has allowed for the identification of common oncogenic signatures such as the activating mutation and may be useful in therapeutic decision making. We report two patients with widespread aggressive gliomas whose tumors were found to express the mutation and then responded robustly albeit transiently when exposed to vemurafenib. Although both patients succumbed to their disease, our results suggest that targeting BRAF might be appropriate for patients with aggressive gliomas that express this mutation.