• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News

Revolutionary approach for treating glioblastoma works with human cells

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
February 1, 2017
in Science News
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram
Loading video…

Credit: Carol Perry, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy

In a rapid-fire series of breakthroughs in just under a year, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have made another stunning advance in the development of an effective treatment for glioblastoma, a common and aggressive brain cancer. The work, published in the Feb. 1 issue of Science Translational Medicine, describes how human stem cells, made from human skin cells, can hunt down and kill human brain cancer, a critical and monumental step toward clinical trials — and real treatment.

Last year, the UNC-Chapel Hill team, led by Shawn Hingtgen, an assistant professor in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy and member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Care Center, used the technology to convert mouse skin cells to stem cells that could home in on and kill human brain cancer, increasing time of survival 160 to 220 percent, depending on the tumor type. Now, they not only show that the technique works with human cells but also works quickly enough to help patients, whose median survival is less than 18 months and chance of surviving beyond two years is 30 percent.

"Speed is essential," Hingtgen said. "It used to take weeks to convert human skin cells to stem cells. But brain cancer patients don't have weeks and months to wait for us to generate these therapies. The new process we developed to create these stem cells is fast enough and simple enough to be used to treat a patient."

Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy are the standard of care for glioblastoma, and that hasn't changed in three decades. In months, the tumor comes back in almost every single patient, invariably sending tiny tendrils out into the surrounding brain tissue. Drugs can't reach them, and surgeons can't see them, so it's almost impossible to remove all of the cancer, explained Ryan Miller, a coauthor of the study and neuropathologist at UNC Hospitals and associate professor at the UNC School of Medicine.

"We desperately need something better," said Hingtgen.

The key to Hingtgen's treatment is "skin flipping," a technology for creating neural stem cells from skin cells that won a Nobel Prize in 2012. The first step is to harvest fibroblasts — skin cells responsible for producing collagen and connective tissue — from the patient and reprogram those cells to become what are called induced neural stem cells, which have an innate ability to home in on cancer cells in the brain.

But by themselves, stem cells can only find a tumor and bump up against it — not kill it — so the team had to engineer stem cells that could carry therapeutic agents that the cells can launch at the tumor to kill it.

Hingtgen's stem cells can carry a protein that activates an inert substance called a prodrug that is given to the patient. The cells can then generate a small halo of drug that is located just around the stem cell, rather than it being circulated throughout the patient's body, reducing unwanted side effects.

"We're one to two years away from clinical trials, but for the first time, we showed that our strategy for treating glioblastoma works with human stem cells and human cancers," said Hingtgen. "This is a big step toward a real treatment — and making a real difference."

###

Media Contact

Thania Benios
[email protected]
917-930-5988
@unc

Home

############

Story Source: Materials provided by Scienmag

Share13Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Captured endangered Preble’s meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius preblei)

New biobanking partnership safeguards the genetic diversity of America’s endangered species

October 3, 2023
Mangroves

Improved mangrove conservation could yield cash, carbon, coastal benefits

October 3, 2023

How floods kill, long after the water has gone – global decade-long study

October 3, 2023

Host genetics helps explain childhood cancer survivors’ mortality risk from second cancers

October 3, 2023
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • blank

    Microbe Computers

    59 shares
    Share 24 Tweet 15
  • A pioneering study from Politecnico di Milano sheds light on one of the still poorly understood aspects of cancer

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • Fossil spines reveal deep sea’s past

    34 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • Scientists go ‘back to the future,’ create flies with ancient genes to study evolution

    75 shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

New biobanking partnership safeguards the genetic diversity of America’s endangered species

Improved mangrove conservation could yield cash, carbon, coastal benefits

How floods kill, long after the water has gone – global decade-long study

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 56 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In