Modern gene therapy re-records glioma cells to functioning neurons

Glioma is a fatal neurological disorder with little or no interventional treatment, despite extensive research over recent decades.

A research team led by Dr. Gong Chen, a former professor at Penn State University and now directing a brain repair center at Jinan University in China, has developed a novel gene gene to reprogram glioma cells to functioning neurons, shedding light new on glioma treatment. The work was published in Biology & Treatment of Cancer on March 22, 2021

Glioma is a common malignant cancer that develops in the central nervous system. For patients with a type of malignant glioma called glioblastoma, the median survival time is usually less than 15 months.

Surgical removal with chemotherapy and / or radiation therapy are the main treatments but their effectiveness is limited. A number of clinical trials are underway using engineered immune cells to target primary or recurrent glioma, but they still face real barriers to solve.

Glioma is caused by aggressive proliferation of glial cells. Chen’s team has previously published a series of work showing that inner glial cells of the brain can be directly converted to active neurons after overexpressing neural transcription factors such as NeuroD1 and Dlx2. In this work, the team expanded their research from glial cells to glioma cells and found that neural transcription factors can also turn glioma cells into neurons.

Our cell conversion therapy for glioma is very specific and different from conventional cancer treatments that typically aim to kill cancer cells. One major effect caused by killing cancer cells is the inevitable collateral damage to normal cells. In contrast, when we use gene therapy technology to convert glioma cells to neurons, there is very little effect on normal cells “, Dr. Chen explained why they developed this new technology. . “

Dr. Gong Chen, former Professor, Penn State University

“Another important benefit of our gene therapy approach is that, after overexpression of neural transcription factors such as NeuroD1 or other transcription factors into glioma cells, the glioma cells become stop proliferation just before they are converted to neurons.This transcription gene is based on a factor.Therapeutic therapy can provide a new strategy to extend the time window of treatment by arresting a rapid multiplication of malignant glioma cells, “said Dr. Xin Wang, the first author of this work.

While they are excited about their new decisions, Dr. Chen and colleagues also acknowledge that this new technology of treating glioma with a gene-based gene is still at a child’s level.

Many technical issues still need to be considered, such as developing a safe viral delivery system, targeting glioma cells in a specific way, and possible side effects caused by neural transcription factors. They also plan to combine their stem cell therapy with other interventions to achieve synergistic effects for glioma treatment.