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Tdvorak, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Paediatric high-grade gliomas (pHGG) are rare, aggressive, and highly invasive brain tumours, accounting for over 40% of all childhood brain tumour death. Standard of care treatment relies primarily on radiotherapy, but prognosis remains poor, with a median survival of only nine to 15 months. There is an urgent need for new treatment strategies that improve survival without harming the developing brain.
A new Brain Research UK-funded project led by Professor Ester Hammond aims to enhance the effectiveness of radiotherapy by exploiting a biological vulnerability in pHGG cells: their high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS).
ROS are essential for normal cell function, but their levels must be tightly regulated. Excessive ROS can cause irreparable damage to cells and trigger cell death. Cancer cells, including pHGG, undergo metabolic reprogramming to meet their increased energy demands, resulting in chronically elevated ROS levels. This places them closer to a critical threshold for survival, creating a therapeutic opportunity to push ROS levels beyond what the tumour cells can tolerate.
Previous experimental treatments designed to boost ROS levels have done so in healthy cells as well as cancer cells, leading to unacceptable toxicity. Prof. Hammond’s team will investigate a unique experimental agent known as Ag5, a cluster of covalently bonded silver atoms, designed to selectively increase ROS levels in cancer cells, without impacting healthy cells.
Read the full story on the Department of Oncology website.