New method to fight brain cancer

The technique could open a new chapter in the fight against a brain cancer called glioblastoma.

Scientists have just made a breakthrough in anti-cancer research: Converting skin cells into cancer-killing stem cells, opening up a new method to fight brain cancer.

This is the research of scientists at the University of South Carolina. This technique can open a new page in the fight against brain cancer called glioblastoma and promises to be the most effective way to treat this deadly disease.

Only about 30% of brain cancer patients live more than two years after diagnosis, because the disease is so difficult to treat. Even when the tumor is surgically removed, cancerous tendrils invade, spreading deeper into the unreachable part of the brain. As a result, most patients die within 1.5 years of diagnosis.

But a team of scientists at the University of South Carolina has developed a new personalized treatment that uses a patient's own skin cells to eliminate cancerous growths, effectively curing brain cancer.

The research is based on Nobel Prize-winning technology that allows scientists to convert skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells. The skin cells, called fibroblasts, were reprogrammed to become brain stem cells. In experiments with mice, these neural stem cells were able to enter the home of cancer cells, killing them.

Scientists are now planning to focus their research on human stem cells and test effective cancer treatments that can be delivered to these cancer-killing cells.

"Our research represents the latest development of the stem cell technology that won the Nobel Prize in 2012," said lead researcher Shawn Hingtgen. "We wanted to find out how to get these neurons where the cancer cells are and whether they could be used as a therapeutic. This is the first time a direct cell reprogramming technology has been used to treat cancer."

According to VOV