Human skin can be morphed into genetically modified, cancer-killing brain stem cells, according to a new study. This latest advance has only been tested in mice — but eventually, it’s possible that it could be translated into a personalized treatment for people with a deadly form of brain cancer.
The study builds on an earlier discovery that brain stem cells have a weird affinity for cancers. So researchers, led by Shawn Hingtgen, a professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, created genetically engineered brain stem cells out of human skin. Then they armed the stem cells with drugs to squirt directly onto the tumors of mice that had been given a human form of brain cancer. The treatment shrank the tumors and extended survival of the mice….
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But if they could be modified to become cancer-fighting homing missiles, it would give patients with a deadly and incurable brain cancer called glioblastoma a better chance at survival.
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“You can’t really generate a bank of neural stem cells from anybody because you have to go in and resect the brain,” says stem cell scientist Frank Marini at the Wake Forest School of Medicine….
[The study can be found here.]The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: The next weapon against brain cancer may be human skin
