A study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University has made it possible to develop a gel capable of obtaining surprising results.
An experimental new cure could offer new hope to patients suffering from glioblastomaone of the brain tumors more lethal and common in humans. Thanks to a innovative gelwhich cured 100% of mice suffering from this form of cancer, researchers from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering of theJohns Hopkins University they got a surprising result.
“Despite recent technological advances, there 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 tumors.”
Cui’s team combined an anticancer drug and an antibody in a solution that self-assembles into a gel to fill the tiny cavities left after the removal surgical of brain tumors. The gel can reach areas that surgery may not be able to reach and where current drugs struggle to reach to kill lingering cancer cells and suppress tumor growth.
The findings were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The gel also appears to activate an immune response that a mouse’s body struggles to activate on its own when fighting glioblastoma. When the researchers challenged the surviving mice with a new tumor again, their immune systems alone defeated the disease without further drugs.
The gel appears to not only repel cancer but also help reconfigure the immune system to discourage recurrence with the memory immunological, the researchers said. However surgery is essential to this approach, they added. Applying the gel directly to the brain, without surgical removal of the tumor, resulted in a 50% survival rate.
“The surgery probably relieves 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 filaments nano-sized made with paclitaxela drug approved by the Fda for breast, lung and other types of cancer.
The filaments 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 that specific antibody, the team is trying to overcome one of the toughest hurdles in glioblastoma research. It targets i macrophagesa type of cell that sometimes supports immunity but other times protects cancer cells, allowing for aggressive tumor growth.
One of the landmark therapies for glioblastoma is a wafer co-developed by a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1990s, known commercially as Gliadel. It is an FDA-approved biodegradable polymer that also delivers drugs into the brain after surgical removal of the tumor.
Gliadel has shown significant survival rates in lab experiments, and the results obtained with the new gel are among the most impressive the Johns Hopkins team has seen, they said Betty Tylerco-author and associate professor of neurosurgery, who played a pivotal role in the development of Gliadel.
“We usually don’t see 100% survival in mouse models of this disease,” Tyler said. It is very exciting to think that there is potential for this new hydrogel combination to change the survival curve for patients with glioblastoma.”
Nurse Times editorial team
Source: il Fatto Quotidiano
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