Revolutionary new gel cures 100% of mice of aggressive brain cancer

Glioblastoma is a brain tumor, one of the most dangerous and difficult to treat. Now, a research team has successfully tested a gel in mice that combines an anti-cancer drug with an antibody that can reach areas that surgery and other drugs can miss.

A description of the strategy that allowed achieving 100% animal survival was published in the journal PNAS.

According to scientists at Johns Hopkins University,new gel offers hope for future treatment of glioblastoma as it combines anti-cancer drug and antibodiesa combination of treatments that is difficult to apply simultaneously due to the molecular composition of the ingredients.”

Translation of results obtained in mice

However, this study is conducted in mice. Henry Brehm, chief neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital and author of the paper, emphasized the difficulty of translating lab results from the gel into treatments of significant clinical significance.

The gel solution, developed by the Honggang Cui team, consists of nanometer-sized filaments made from paclitaxel.a drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of breast, lung, and other types of tumors.

The filaments serve as a delivery vehicle for an antibody called aCD47. Evenly covering the tumor cavity, the gel releases the drug consistently over several weeks, the university said in a statement.

The gel is able to fill the tiny furrows left after the surgical removal of a brain tumor.

“It can reach areas that can be missed by surgery and that current drugs cannot reach to kill persistent cancer cells and suppress tumor growth,” the authors summarize.

The drug also appears to elicit an immune response that is difficult for the mouse body to activate on its own in the fight against glioblastoma.

When the researchers reconstructed a new glioblastoma tumor in surviving mice, their immune systems defeated the cancer on their own without additional drugs.

According to the researchers, it appears that the gel not only stops cancer, but also helps reprogram the immune system to prevent recurrence through immunological memory.

However, surgery is required for this approach, the researchers note; applying the gel directly to the brain without surgical removal of the tumor resulted in a 50% survival rate.

gliadel

One of the gold standard treatments for glioblastoma developed by Johns Hopkins and MIT in the 1990s is commercially known as Gliadel.

It is a biodegradable polymer that also delivers drugs to the brain after surgical removal of a tumor.

Gliadel has shown significant survival rates in laboratory experiments, but the results obtained with the new gel are the most impressive, according to Betty Tyler, also an author and professor at the university of the same name.

“We don’t usually see 100% survival in mice that model this disease,” he said.

Non-representative model for people

Jordi Bruna Escuer of the Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research notes that the animal model on which the study is based does not at all reflect what human glioblastoma is.

“They were working with a mouse cell line that was chemically induced with a number of changes that morphologically mimic glioblastoma, but at the molecular level, they have nothing to do with human glioblastoma.”

For this scientist, who is not signing the paper, “the claim that the immune response of a mouse to this experimental glioma is the same as that of a patient is more than a significant leap of faith.”

“There is still a long way to go before the therapy they propose can be tested in patients to first assess safety and then some efficacy.”, points out the Scientific Media Center of Spain.