A new experimental cure for the brain cancer could offer new hope to patients suffering from glioblastoma, one of the most lethal and common brain tumors in humans. Thanks to a innovative gel which cured 100% of mice affected by this form of cancer, researchers from the chemical and biomolecular engineering department of theJohns Hopkins University they got a surprising result. “Despite i recent technological advancesthere is a desperate need for new treatment strategies,” he said Honggang Cui, the chemical and biomolecular engineer who led the research. “We think this hydrogel will represent the future and complement current treatments for brain cancer.”
The team of Which he combined a drug anticancer and an antibody in a solution that self-assembles into a gel to fill the tiny cells cavity leave later the removal surgical of a brain tumor. The gel can reach areas that surgery may not be able to reach and where i drugs current they struggle to push themselves to kill lingering cancer cells and suppress tumor growth. The results were published today on Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The gel also appears to activate one answer immune that a rat’s body struggles to activate on its own when fighting the glioblastoma. When the researchers again challenged the surviving mice with a new glioblastoma tumor, their immune systems alone defeated the cancer without any further drugs.
The gel looks not alone reject cancerbut also help to reconfigure the immune system to discourage recurrence with the memory immunological, the researchers said. However, the surgery is essential to this approach, the researchers said. Applying the gel directly into the brain without the removal surgical of the tumor led to a rate of survival 50%
“The surgery probably alleviates some of that pressure and allows more time for the gel to activate the immune system to fight the cancer cells“, he said Which. The gel solution consists of nano-sized filaments made with paclitaxela drug approved by the FDA for breast cancer, lung cancer and other types of cancer. THE filaments they provide a vehicle to deliver an antibody called aCD47. Covering the tumor cavity uniformly, the gel releases the drug steadily over several weeks and its active ingredients remain close to the injection site.
Using the specific one antibodyil team is trying to pass one of the obstacles more difficult in researching the glioblastoma. It targets i macrophagesa type of cell that sometimes supports immunity but other times protects them cells cancerous, allowing for aggressive tumor growth. One of the reference therapies for glioblastoma is a wafer co-developed by a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins he was born in Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1990s, commercially known as Gliadel. It is a biodegradable polymer approved by FDA which also delivers drugs into the brain after surgical removal of the tumor.
Gliadel showed rates of survival significant in laboratory experiments, but the results obtained with the new gel are among the most impressive that the team of Johns Hopkins have seen, he said Betty Tylerco-author and associate professor of neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who played a vital role in the development of Gliadel. “Usually we don’t see the survival by 100% in mouse models of this disease,” he said Tyler. “To think there is potential for this new combination of idrogel to change the survival curve for i patients con glioblastoma it’s very exciting.”
By Lella Simone