Itongadol.- They are now developing a drug to suppress a cancer-driving protein, providing new hope for people suffering from glioblastoma tumors.
A promising new drug against a particularly deadly form of brain cancer is being developed in the lab of Rotem Karni at the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem.
Rotem’s postdoctoral fellow, biochemist Regina Golan-Gerstl, had previously identified a genetic protein – it’s called splicing factor hnRNP A2/B1 — involved in the spread of glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive type of brain cancer in adults. She and her team explained their groundbreaking discovery in the American Association for Cancer Research journal Cancer Research in 2011.
Now, says Karni, the Israel Cancer Research Fund-supported investigation is focusing on how to use what they learned to develop a drug to cure glioblastoma, the most common and deadliest of malignant primary brain tumors in adults.
Glioblastoma tumors are nearly impossible to remove with surgery, and rarely respond completely to chemotherapy or radiation. Only about 10 percent of glioblastoma patients live five years or longer after diagnosis. The median survival rate, even with medical intervention, is just over a year.