DrugBank contains drug therapies which are linked to disease indications, and each compound record has additional information about targets, mechanism of action, etc..

For example, the following search link returns approved drug indications for a DrugBank search for "brain cancer":

https://www.drugbank.ca/unearth/q?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=brain+cancer&searcher=indications&approved=1&vet_approved=1&nutraceutical=0&illicit=0&withdrawn=0&investigational=0&button=

There are a few irrelevant results returned there, but hope this gets you started with your first question!

 Dear Daniel,

Thanks a lot for introducing that interesting database. It would be very helpful for finding the targets regarding the drug therapies.

Hi Mani,

here are some for metastatic brain tumor

Carmustine

 Lomustine

 Prednisone

 Triamcinolone

Dear Swarnendra,

Thanks a lot for your answer.

Dear Mani,

The answer is very complex because "brain cancer" is not just one type of cancer, but many types. Even before advances in sequencing, it was very clear from tissue biopsy that brain tumors were very diverse, depending on the cell of origin, for example, astrocytoma versus oligodendroglioma versus glioblastoma, and even the location in the brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHO_classification_of_tumours_of_the_central_nervous_system

More recently, with the advent of DNA sequencing technologies, it is becoming clear that there is a molecular classification of brain tumors that define subsets based on mutations. 

Unfortunately, most clinical treatment is still not based on the mutation, although research is heading in this direction with personalized medicine.

In my field of glioblastoma, other drugs used clinically would be temozolomide and vincristine.

Hope this helped!

 Dear Maria,

Thanks a lot for your informative answer. 

You have mentioned that "there is a molecular classification of brain tumors that define subsets based on mutations". Do you know which genes exactly?

Kind regards

Dear Mani,

There are many, more than I can list. They depend on the age of onset, whether the cancer is aggressive or low grade, and where in the brain the tumor arises. I'm not sure what your university access is like to journals, but here are a few papers. I placed the link to the pubmed abstracts.

This was one of the first works:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=glioma+parsons+2008+science

This was a follow-up, the article is open access:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20129251

Many more have since followed. This is a more recent one on diffuse glioma, 2016, it is a free article too:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26824661

You can also check out the website by the Cancer atlas genome:

https://cancergenome.nih.gov/cancersselected/glioblastomamultiforme

Some of the most common mutations in glioblastoma are listed there. Plus, I think the database is open, but it requires some skill to navigate.

This one is for lower grade glioma:

https://cancergenome.nih.gov/cancersselected/lowergradeglioma

Glioma is my area of expertise. I'm not aware if other types of brain cancer have received similar sequencing.

Hope this information put you in a position to get started!

Regards,

Masha

Dear Masha,

Thanks a lot. It was helpful indeed.

Hello Mani;

Hope you are doing well. You first have to decide whether you will be working on primary or secondary brain tumors? Also visit the "http://www.genome.jp/kegg/disease/cancer.html" and check the pathway to select your genes. I hope this would help.

Dear Eman,

Nice to hear from you :)

Thanks a lot for your answer.