Tel Aviv University announced a major breakthrough, Sunday, in understanding and treating one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer.
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"Glioblastoma is the deadliest type of cancer in the central nervous system, accounting for most malignant brain tumors," said Professor Ronit Satchi-Fainaro, director of the Cancer Biology Research Center and the head of the Cancer Research and Nanomedicine Laboratory at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine.
"It is aggressive, invasive, and fast-growing, making it resistant to existing treatments, with patients dying within a year of the cancer's onset. Moreover, glioblastoma is defined as a 'cold tumor', which means that it does not respond to immunotherapeutic attempts to activate the immune system against it," she added.
Initially, researchers identified an unusual failure in the brain's immune system, which not only did not inhibit the cancer, it actually amplified the cell division and spread of glioblastoma cancer cells. This is due to the presence of a protein called P-Selectin (SELP).
Researchers were able to inhibit the secretion of the SELP protein, neutralizing the failure in the immune system, restoring its normal activity, and blocking the spread of this incurable cancer.
The Tel Aviv University team collaborated with neurosurgeons from Sourasky Medical Center who supplied glioblastoma tissue samples removed during surgery as well as neurosurgeons from Johns Hopkins University and the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, both located in Baltimore, who supplied healthy brain tissue from autopsies.
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Satchi-Fainaro emphasized that the new study may have lifesaving therapeutic implications. She said she hopes that the fact that the treatment inhibiting SELP has been proven safe in humans will pave the way for relatively rapid approval of a clinical trial repurposing the new treatment for glioblastoma.
"Unfortunately, glioblastoma patients need new treatments immediately. Our treatment may be the needed breakthrough in the battle against the most daunting cancer of all," she said in the TAU statement.
Two of the most notable victims of glioblastoma were Beau Biden, the late son of US President Joe Biden, and former Arizona Senator and 2008 Presidential nominee, John McCain.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
