When low doses of cancer drugs are administered continuously near malignant brain tumors using so-called iontronic technology, cancer cell growth drastically decreases. Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, and the Medical University of Graz, Austria, demonstrated this in experiments with bird embryos. The results, published in the Journal of Controlled Release , is one step closer to new types of effective treatments for severe cancer forms.
Malignant brain tumors often recur despite surgery and post-treatment with chemotherapy and radiation. This is because cancer cells can "hide" deep within tissue and then regrow. The most effective drugs cannot pass through the so-called blood-brain barrier – a tight network surrounding blood vessels in the brain that prevents many substances in the blood from entering it.
Consequently, there are very few available options for treating aggressive brain tumors. In 2021, a research group from Linköping University and the Medical University of Graz demonstrated how an iontronic pump could be used to locally administer drugs and inhibit cell growth for a particularly malignant and aggressive form of brain cancer – glioblastoma. At that time, experiments were conducted on tumor cells in a petri dish.
Now, the same research group has taken the next step towards using this technology in clinical cancer treatment. By allowing glioblastoma cells to grow using undeveloped bird embryos, new treatment methods can be tested on living t.
