The glioblastoma, a brain cancer, It is one of the deadliest cancers. Most patients die within two years and few exceed five, a statistic that has not improved in decades due to a lack of effective treatment options.
“The aggressiveness of glioblastoma is notorious,” he says Alea Mills, Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). “The normal thing is to operate, deal with aggressive drugs and hope for the best».
But now, Mills and his colleagues have discovered that this deadly cancer has a vulnerability, BRD8, that could lead to new treatment options and better patient outcomes.
The CSHL team recently solved a decades-long mystery surrounding the aggressiveness of glioblastoma by linking the BRD8 protein to another protein, called P53. P53, a building block of the body’s natural defenses against cancer, prevents cells from growing excessively and becoming tumors.
P53, a building block of the body’s natural defenses against cancer, prevents cells from growing excessively and becoming tumors
Almost all cancers depend on P53 being mutated and therefore rendered useless. But strangely, in most cases of glioblastoma, P53 is unscathed.
“Then why does this cancer act like P53 is broken?” the Xueqin Sun wondered. This crucial question led Mills’ team to discover that BRD8 had rebelled in glioblastoma, crippling P53 in a whole new way.
BRD8 closes access to genes on chromosomes. If a gene is tightly coiled, it cannot be used: it is as if it were “asleep”.
Mills and his team revealed that BRD8 was inappropriately active in glioblastoma, quiescent many of P53’s critical anticancer defenses. When the researchers inactivated BRD8 through gene editing, the P53 “arsenal” suddenly woke up and began to block tumor growth.
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