A family of genes instrumental in the growth of a wide range of tough to treat brain tumours has been unmasked by a team of scientists at the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute in the US. The lead author Dr Joshua Breunig said that “following these fresh genetic findings, we propose to evolve targeted therapeutics that in the future may be effective against high-grade brain tumours and increase the survival of patients.”
It is extremely difficult as of now to treat high grade brain tumours or gliomas and the survival rate of patients is very low and almost never exceeds five years. Invariably, deadly secondary gliomas develop among patients treated for primary gliomas. This is a surefire killer.
Tumours typically breed multiple different groupings of mutations, which defy even the latest in in radiation and chemotherapy and eventually kill patients. After modeling high grade brain tumours from stem cells that reside within the brain with the help of a leading edge method called rapid modeling, which is capable of creating as many as five distinct tumour models within 45 minutes, the scientists traced the gliomas to the Ets family of genes, which determine the behaviour of tumour cells by controlling the generation of genes required for tumour growth and the fate of a cell.
By blocking the expression of the Ets genes, the researchers were able to identify and deploy novel treatment therapies. The researchers said that the immediate next steps would be to test the function of every individual Ets factor to understand their particular role in the progression and recurrence of tumour.