A team from the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), led by Eric Van Dyck, has published a review of new strategies against glioblastoma in the journal Neuro-Oncology Advances. This is the most common and aggressive primary brain tumour in adults and, despite surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, it almost always comes back.
The researchers explain that glioblastoma cells, because they divide very quickly, undergo what is known as replication stress, in which the machinery that copies DNA breaks down. To survive, they depend on specific DNA repair systems, which also allow them to resist conventional treatments.
The review suggests that inhibitors capable of blocking these repair enzymes, combined with standard chemotherapy, could prevent tumour cells from recovering. In addition, unrepaired DNA damage can generate warning signals for the immune system, opening the way to combination with immunotherapies.
The authors present these conclusions as promising directions for future therapies, since the work does not yet include data from clinical trials in patients.
