Researchers Unlock Previously Unknown Weakness of

Researchers Unlock Previously Unknown Weakness of Brain Cancer

A research team from UC San Francisco has discovered a previously unknown weakness in glioblastoma, one of the deadliest and hardest-to-treat types of brain cancer. Brain cancers usually originate from mutations in brain cells or the spinal cord, and they can be incredibly hard to treat due to their proximity to delicate and important brain tissue. Glioblastomas are an especially fast-growing and dangerous type of brain tumor that typically affects older adults and has no known cure. These tumors usually spread out to nearby brain cells, damaging and causing cognitive decline over time.

UC San Francisco researchers now say that this deadly encroachment of nearby brain cells could be the key to improving glioblastoma treatment. The researchers discovered that as glioblastoma tumors spread from their original point of origin, their neural activity alters the structure of nearby neural connections. This alteration of neural connections results in the cognitive decline that is often associated with glioblastomas.

However, the researchers found that a drug called gabapentin, which is typically used to prevent seizures, can inhibit tumor-promoting neural activity in mice with glioblastoma. Their findings present an alternative option for treating glioblastoma that could potentially arrest the debilitating cognitive decline it causes in patients and finally grant physicians a more effective means of addressing the notoriously hard-to-treat condition.

Study lead and neurosurgeon Shawn Hervey-Jumper said that the group’s findings could lead to an entirely new avenue of possibilities for treating glioblastoma. Hervey-Jumper, who led the study with post-doc Saritha Krishna, PhD, began the study soon after scientists found that positive-feedback loops fueled the development of brain tumors.

This feedback loop begins when tumor cells produce neurotransmitter-like substances that cause neurons to become hyperactive, leading to the growth of new cancer cells that produce more neurotransmitter-like substances which encourage further cancer cell growth, leading to a self-perpetuating feedback loop.

Hervey-Jumper and her team built on this research to determine how this feedback loop affected human behavior and cognition in people with brain cancer. They found that brain tumor cells could cause information-processing regions of the brain to degrade and force the brain to recruit a wider network of neural cells than before to process information.

With the knowledge that brain tumors were leveraging brain networks to grow, the research team investigated the effect of seizure medication gabapentin in mice with glioblastoma and found that the medication halted the tumor’s expansion. The team hopes that its findings can aid in the development of treatments to slow down the cognitive decline caused by glioblastoma.

These new insights regarding the way various brain cancers develop and manifest could make the task of developing more effective treatments by companies such as CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) less daunting since there may be several mechanisms to target to beat stubborn and deadly central nervous system cancers.

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