too late for Mom, but maybe not for others

A new therapy for glioblastoma (GBM), the most common and most aggressive brain tumor, may finally be here.* It's too late to help Mom, but maybe others can benefit.

Headline:

Breakthrough Therapy Obliterates Deadly Brain Tumor in Days

Brain scans of a 72-year-old man diagnosed with a highly aggressive form of cancer known as a glioblastoma have revealed a remarkable regression in his tumor's size within days of receiving an infusion of an innovative new treatment.

Though the outcomes of two other participants with similar diagnoses were somewhat less positive, the case's success still bodes well for the search for a way to effectively cure what is currently an incurable disease.

Glioblastomas are typically about as deadly as cancers can get. Emerging from supporting cells inside the central nervous system, they can rapidly develop into malignant masses that claim up to 95 percent of patient lives within five years.

Researchers from Mass General Cancer Centre in the US suspected a treatment based on the patient's own immune system, known as CAR T-cell therapy, might succeed where other therapies fail.

Having been approved for treating blood cancers, CAR T-cell therapy's impressive ability to sniff out cancerous cells just might present advantages in destroying glioblastomas.

Patient T-cells are collected and re-engineered to recognize identifying surface markers on the outside of cancer cells before being returned via an infusion, meaning CAR T-cell therapy is somewhat like employing a local bounty hunter to slip silently through the alleys in search of a wanted villain.

One marker prevalent across a range of glioblastomas, a mutated variant of a protein called epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), has potential as a target for CAR T-cell treatment. Unfortunately glioblastomas wear a variety of disguises that make the re-engineering process a real challenge.

To overcome this, researchers have found a way to encourage CAR T-cells to also produce antibodies that seek out non-variant EGFRs. While these proteins aren't usually expressed by brain cells, they are found on cancer cells, providing an extra identifying feature for the recruited bounty hunters.

This could be something. Or someone just got lucky.

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*Famous victims of this tumor include Ted Kennedy, John McCain, and Beau Biden.