United States: Scientists at UCSF have created a new “molecular GPS” that helps immune cells find and kill brain tumors without hurting healthy tissue. This is the first therapy that can guide living cells to a specific part of the body, something that was difficult in earlier cancer treatments. The technology worked in mice, and researchers hope to start testing it in people next year. 

In the mice, the researchers demonstrated how the immune cells can both eradicate a highly fatal brain tumor known as glioblastoma and stop the cancer from recurring. They also used the cells to reduce inflammation in a mice model of multiple sclerosis. 

As reported by the Medicalxpress, ‘As with many immune cells, living cells are built to navigate the body, detect their environment and locate their targets,’ explains Wendell Lim, the professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-author of the paper, Science, December 5. 

The task is to get to the source of disease The map of this policy outlines seven steps. 

There are about 290000 new cases of brain cancer annually in the United States, and it is the most common type of tumor in children. 

Due to their location, they are some of the most difficult cancers to treat in a patient’s body. In surgery, or in chemotherapy you are taking a gamble and some drugs do not even penetrate the blood — brain barrier. 

To avoid the problems described above, the scientists created a “molecular GPS” for immune cells with a zip code for the brain and a street address for the tumor. 

In particular, they discovered that brevican, a protein involved in the production of the gelatinous matrix of the brain and absent elsewhere, is the perfect molecular zip code. For the street address, they employed two proteins common to most brain cancers. 

They trained the immune cells to go after them but only when the cells first recognize brevican and then either one or the other of the brain cancer proteins. 

When the scientists have placed the immune cells into the bloodstream they easily got to the mouse’s brain and destroyed the growing tumor. Any immune cells that remain in the bloodstream do not actively attack any tissues outside of the brain that may also have this specific protein’s “postal code”.