2023-06-14 02:13:52
A. Background and problem definition
A glioblastoma is a serious brain tumor. Patients with a glioblastoma usually die of the tumor within 1.5 years. New medicines are desperately needed.
Perhaps sulforaphane is a good new drug against glioblastoma. Evgen is a small company that has made a tablet with sulforaphane in it. It’s called SFX-01. Now it’s time to see if SFX-01 really works against glioblastoma.
B. Research direction/proposed solution
In recent years, many studies have been conducted into new drugs against glioblastoma. Unfortunately all to no avail. We think that the result of all the research is so disappointing because glioblastomas are in the brain. The blood-brain barrier is located between the brain and the blood. Many drugs cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. We think that drugs often don’t get into the glioblastoma at all!
We now wonder whether SFX-01 actually enters the glioblastoma. Of course we also want to know how SFX-01 works. We believe that these questions must be answered before we can proceed with large, expensive and time-consuming research in patients.
C. Relevance
A new drug against glioblastoma would of course be very good news for patients, their loved ones and their doctors. But there’s another important novelty in this study: the idea of seeing if SFX-01 arrives in the glioblastoma. This idea allows us to decide very quickly whether SFX-01 has a chance against glioblastomas. If this is not the case, because the drug does not reach the tumor, no further testing is necessary. We think this idea could be applied to other drugs and other types of cancer as well. It could therefore completely change future research into cancer drugs.
D. Research Questions
We are wondering
1. Whether SFX-01 gets into the glioblastoma
2. How SFX-01 works against glioblastoma
E. Research design
We give SFX-01 to a clump of glioblastoma cells in the laboratory. We wonder if the cells will then stop growing. We are going to look very precisely at why the cells stop growing. That could teach us how SFX-01 works. Then we give SFX-01 in the lab to mice with glioblastoma. When the mice are dead, we examine their glioblastoma. We are curious whether SFX-01 has entered the glioblastoma. And we look very closely at what those glioblastomas look like. That will further teach us how SFX-01 works. Finally, we give SFX-01 to patients who will be operated on for their glioblastoma. We wonder if SFX-01 got into the glioblastoma. That is why we take a good look at the glioblastoma after surgery. We will of course also look at how SFX-01 has worked.
F. Expected Outcomes
The research will tell us whether SFX-01 gets into the glioblastoma and whether it works there.
G. Description of steps required to implement result
When SFX-01 arrives in the tumor, we will do a larger study in patients with glioblastoma. Then we will see if it also inhibits the growth of the tumor.
#drug #glioblastoma #opportunity #SFX01