Brain Tumors, Other Hard-to-Treat Cancers May Finally be Treated with Postoperative Therapy for Glioblastoma Patients

One of the challenges of treating brain tumors is that surgeons cannot always remove every bit of tumor or glioma stem cells that might stay in the brain.

As specified in a EurekAlert! report, similar to the hardiest weed, "glioblastoma nearly always springs back, typically within months after the initial brain tumor of a patient is removed.

This is why survival rates for this cancer type are only 25 percent at one year and descend to five percent by the five-year mark.

One feature of glioblastoma is that the tumor cells are extremely aggressive and will infiltrate all the tissues surrounding it.

Glioblastoma

Consequently, the surgeon cannot feel clearly the boundary between the normal tissue and the tumor, and one cannot remove as much as possible as all the tissues in the brain are quite essential; no one would certainly want to remove too much, explained assistant Quanyin Hu, an assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin - Madison School of Pharmacy's Pharmaceutical Sciences Division.

Therefore, she added, the tumor will return again, which sharply reduces the survival rate following treatment.

However, the Cell-Inspired Personalized Therapeutic Lab or CIPT of Hu has developed an immunity-boosting solid postoperative therapy that could transform patients' chances of glioblastoma.

Hu and collaborators published their study on the use of the treatment in mouse models of human glioblastoma this month in the Science Translational Medicine journal.

Hydrogel Packed with Nanoparticles

Hu explained that it offers hope for stopping the relapse of glioblastoma, which is detailed on the Healthline website.

The professor added that they prove that this new approach can certainly eliminate such glioma stem cells, which can ultimately stop the glioblastoma from recurring. They can substantially improve survival, added the professor.

Essentially, Hu's laboratory developed a hydrogel that can be injected into the brain cavity that the exercised tumor has left behind.

Hu noted that the hydrogel delivery approach works well since it fills the brain cavity, slowly releases the medicine into the tissue around it, and promotes the cancer-fighting immune response.

The hydrogel is packed with nanoparticles designed to get in and reprogram specific types of immune cells known as macrophages.

Such immune cells typically clear off infectious invaders in the body, although in the tumor environment, they can change into a form that suppresses the immune system, not to mention promotes cancer growth.

Hu said they want to take advantage of such macrophages and transform them into enemies.

For Long-Term Efficacy

If the hydrogel treatment is effective in humans, it could eradicate the necessity for radiation or postsurgical chemotherapy, decreasing toxic side effects and enhancing patient outcomes.

The team's next step is to test the hydrogel in larger animal prototypes and monitor long-term efficacy and toxicity outside the four- to six-month period he previously investigated.

Based on their findings, Hu said there's still a lot of work to do before the method can potentially be translated into the clinic, although they are confident that it is quite a very promising approach for bringing new hope to patients who have glioblastoma so they can recover the following surgery.

While the team is initially focused on glioblastoma, the therapeutic approach could be applied to other aggressive solid tumors, which include breast cancer, noted Hu.

Related information about glioblastoma is shown on Johns Hopkins Medicine's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Cancer in Science Times.