Tamoxifen as a potential treatment of glioma.

Cerebral gliomas have a poor survival time even after multimodal treatment, because of the unavoidable recurrence of tumor. Several trials with a combination of old and new chemotherapics have been performed, but survival time remains generally less than 12 months. Tamoxifen (TAM) has recently been shown to inhibit the growth rate of established and low-passage human glioma cell lines. Furthermore, this drug has enabled stabilization of the clinical and radiographic picture in selected patients with recurrent glioma. Here we review published data to discuss a potential role of TAM in the multimodal postoperative treatment of cerebral gliomas.