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# 1st Patient Being Treated Under Right-to-Try Law
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/1st-patient-being-treated-under-right-to-try-law/
- Published: 2019-01-11T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T00:53:56.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5143139

An unidentified California man with glioblastoma, the same deadly form of brain cancer that claimed the life of Sen. **John McCain** (R-AZ) last year, is the first patient to receive an experimental therapy under the so-called “Right-to-Try” law that was signed into law in 5/2018 by President Trump, according to [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-10/brain-cancer-patient-gets-unproven-therapy-first-under-new-law?ref=fdaweb.com). The treatment, called Gliovac, is a vaccine manipulated from the patient’s own cells and tissue taken from other patients with glioblastoma. It’s being provided to the man by Epitopoietic Research Corp., a closely-held Belgian company that is testing it in human trials.

The patient’s family went to the company to request the therapy after he didn’t qualify for the experimental study of Gliovac or any other trial that was underway, Bloomberg reports. So far about 30 patients have been treated with Gliovac, mainly in clinical trials and a compassionate use program in Europe. Many patients in the U.S. don’t qualify for the study now underway at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine because of the severity of their condition or other unapproved treatments they have tried, a researcher told the news service.