Mexico City.- A team of scientists from the Johns Hopkins University, USA, recently developed a novel gel to administer medications, and thanks to which they cured all rats affected by an aggressive brain cancer. This experimental result offers new hope for patients diagnosed with glioblastoma, one of the deadliest and most common brain tumors in humans.
How it works?
The researchers combined the aCD47 antibody with paclitaxel, a drug against several types of cancer, in a gel solution that self-assembles into nanometric filaments. The filaments refill the small furrows that fall after surgically removing the brain tumor and constantly releasing the medicine for several weeks. Thus, its active ingredients remain close to the place of injection, reaching areas that are inaccessible to surgery.
The drug is responsible for eliminating persistent cancer cells and suppressing tumor growth, while the specific antibody blocks macrophages, which in certain cases protects cancer cells and allows aggressive tumor growth.
When researchers returned to challenge surviving rats with a new glioblastoma tumor, their immune systems alone overcame cancer without additional medication. As the gel in the soil seems to prevent cancer, it also helps to create the necessary immunological memory to prevent recurrence.
From the hand of surgery
However, the application of the gel directly to the brain without surgical removal of the tumor resulted in a survival rate of 50%, for what scientists consider that surgery is essential for this approach to work at 100%. “The surgery is likely to relieve some of that pressure and allow more time for the gel to activate the immune system to fight cancer cells”, commented Honggang Cui, chemical and biomolecular engineer who directed the investigation.
“Despite recent technological advances, there is a great need for new treatment strategies”, señaló Cui. “We believe that this hydrogel will be the future and will complement current treatments for brain cancer”, subrayó she. The results were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
hopeful expectations
“In general, we do not see a 100% survival in rat models of this disease”, explained Betty Tyler, co-author of the work. “Thinking that there is potential for this new combination of hydrogel to change the survival curve of patients with glioblastoma is very exciting,” she says.
The new gel offers hope for the future treatment of glioblastoma because it integrates chemotherapy and immunotherapy, a combination of therapies against cancer that, according to researchers, is difficult to administer simultaneously intracranially due to the molecular composition of the ingredients. “The gel is implanted at the time of tumor resection, which makes it work very well”, explains Tyler. “The challenge for us now is to transfer an exciting phenomenon from laboratory to clinical trials”, Subrayó and co-author, Henry Brem, Chief Neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
