(Feb.3, '15) Despite improvements in the past few decades with surgery,
chemotherapy and radiation therapy, a predictably curative treatment for glioma
does not yet exist. New insights into specific gene mutations that arise in
this often deadly form of brain cancer have pointed to the potential of gene
therapy, but it’s very difficult to effectively deliver toxic or missing genes
to cancer cells in the brain. Now, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have
used nanoparticles to successfully deliver a new therapy to glioma cells in the
brains of rats, prolonging their lives. A draft of the study appeared this week
on the website of the journal ACS Nano.