Understudied Cell in the Brain Could Be Key to Treating Glioblastoma
Published:16 Jan.2024 Source:University of Notre Dame
Glioblastoma is one of the most treatment-resistant cancers, with those diagnosed surviving for less than two years. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have found that a largely understudied cell could offer new insight into how the aggressive, primary brain cancer is able to resist immunotherapy.
Datta's TIME Lab began analyzing different genes expressed in the tumor microenvironment related to the extracellular matrix -- or the scaffolding cells create to support future cell adhesion, migration, proliferation and differentiation -- and other various cell types. What they found was a surprising, fairly new cell type: perivascular fibroblasts. Brain cancer patients with more perivascular fibroblasts in their tumors were more likely to respond poorly to immunotherapies and have poor survival outcomes.
When exploring how this is possible, the researchers found that perivascular fibroblasts support the creation of an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, allowing the cancer to better evade the immune system. Moving forward, they want to do new experiments to confirm what they found in this paper and provide some good ground to start thinking about how to improve response to immunotherapy.