Glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive brain tumor, with a very high mortality in the first year after its diagnosis, for which there are currently no treatments. Rut Valdor, researcher in the Cellular Therapy and Hematopoietic Transplant group at the University of Murcia, leads a project that aims to develop an innovative cell therapy to attack the tumor and, in addition, reactivate the antitumor immune response.
The research group has achieved promising results both in vitro and in vivo by having managed to reactivate the antitumor response in animal models. In recent years, the team has verified how pericytes, a type of perivascular cell with immunological properties that surrounds the brain microvasculature, arterioles and venules, can be useful as a possible treatment against glioblastoma, through the elimination of autophagy. mediated by chaperones (AMC). AMC is a molecular mechanism of degradation of specific proteins that, in the presence of this type of brain tumor, causes pericytes to modify their antitumor immune function and favors tumor progression. Since tumor cells physically interact with the pericyte for their own benefit, researchers have developed a method to isolate and use genetically modified pericytes without AMC as a tool with potential use in the treatment of glioblastoma and that could possibly be used for other types. Of cancer.
The project now focuses its efforts on the development of a preclinical study to validate the effectiveness of this new therapeutic strategy using an animal model based on mice that develop human glioblastoma. In addition, it will try to check if the results are replicated by obtaining the pericytes not from the brain but from human fat, a more accessible source that is currently widely used for cell therapy.
Transparency statement: This research is funded by the “la Caixa” Foundation, an entity that supports the Big Vang scientific information channel.
