Glioblastoma is the diagnosis no one wants to get. Due to its rapid and invasive growth, combined with resistance to common forms of treatment, this most aggressive form of brain cancer often leaves patients with only a few months to live.
Ongoing research is trying to change that. A team of scientists from McMaster University and the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Canada has now identified an inconspicuous type of brain cell that reprograms its communication to support glioblastoma growth. When knocked out in experiments, cancer growth slowed down.
Not only did they discover a critical role for a brain cell type previously thought to be harmless in cancer development, but they also matched it with a drug already on the market. According to the study published in Neuron, the approved HIV medicine Maraviroc extended the lifespan of mice with glioblastoma, demonstrating that the researchers uncovered a potential target to treat a devastating disease.
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A Brain Cell That Shifts Sides
According to the Brain Tumor Foundation, glioblastoma can affect people at any age, with men developing the condition more frequently than women. Unfortunately, due to the nature of this cancer, treatment is often very challenging.
The tumor ecosystem is highly complex and difficult to target. Many drugs cannot enter the brain through the tight blood–brain barrier, and even if treatment — like chemo- or radiotherapy — is possible, the brain environment is extremely sensitive and has only limited ability to recover.
Taking a closer look at which cells are involved in glioblastoma development, or, more precisely, how they communicate, the researchers hoped to find ways to disrupt the connections that support the tumor. One cell type that usually protects nerve fibers, called oligodendrocytes, was found in glioblastoma samples to change allegiance, sending biochemical messengers (pro-tumorigenic cytokines) that promote tumor growth.
“By decoding how these cells talk to each other, we’ve found a vulnerability that could be targeted with a drug that’s already on the market,” said study co-author Sheila Singh, professor of surgery at McMaster, in a press release.
HIV Drug Expands Lifespan
Precise discoveries like this can hold the key to matching the right treatment to the right target. Scientists already knew which receptor on the tumor matched the cytokines they found were released by oligodendrocytes.
When they targeted the so-called C-C chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5) in mouse models, either through genetic knockdown (removing the genetic information needed to make the receptor) or by administering Maraviroc, survival was prolonged.
Maraviroc is a drug already approved to target the same receptor and is predominantly used in HIV treatment. This offers hope: A medication that is already on the market can be approved more quickly for new therapies, in this case, to treat glioblastoma.
Targeting Glioblastoma’s Complex Communication Network
“This finding opens a promising path to explore whether blocking this pathway can speed progress toward new treatment options for patients,” said co-author Jason Moffat, senior scientist and head of the Genetics & Genome Biology program at SickKids, in the release.
This is not the first time the team has uncovered a potential treatment strategy. They described a novel pathway involved in building normal brain architecture that is hijacked by glioblastoma cells, as described in a Nature study from 2024. By creating a new cell therapy that targets the cancer’s GPS system, mice showed better survival chances, and returning cancer cells were destroyed at least 50 percent of the time.
The findings from a single team show that undermining glioblastoma’s complex communication system is a key area for finding new treatment options for patients who desperately need them.
This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.
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