Reprogrammed skin cells shrink brain tumors in miceImagine cells that can move through your brain , hunting down cancer and destroying it before they themselves disappear without a trace . Scientists have just achieved that in mice , creating personalized tumor - homing cells from adult skin cells that can shrink brain tumors to 2 % to 5 % of their original size . Although the strategy has yet to be fully tested in people , the new method could one day give doctors a quick way to develop a custom treatment for aggressive cancers like glioblastoma , which kills most human patients in 12 – 15 months . It only took 4 days to create the tumor - homing cells for the mice . Glioblastomas are nasty : They spread roots and tendrils of cancerous cells through the brain , making them impossible to remove surgically . They , and other cancers , also exude a chemical signal that attracts stem cells — specialized cells that can produce multiple cell types in the body . Scientists think stem cells might detect tumors as a wound that needs healing and migrate to help fix the damage . But that gives scientists a secret weapon — if they can harness stem cells ’ natural ability to “ home ” toward tumor cells , the stem cells could be manipulated to deliver cancer - killing drugs precisely where they are needed . Other research hasTo solve these problems , Hingtgen ’ s group wanted to see whether they could skip a step in the genetic reprogramming process , which first transforms adult skin cells into standard stem cells and then turns those into neural stem cells . Treating the skin cells with a biochemical cocktail to promote neural stem cell characteristics seemed to do the trick , turning it into a one - step process , he and his colleague report today in Science Translational Medicine . But the next big question was whether these cells could home in on tumors in lab dishes , and in animals , like neural stem cells . “ We were really holding our breath , ” Hingtgen says . “ The day we saw the cells crawling across the [ Petri ] dish toward the tumors , we knew we had something special . ” The tumor - homing cells moved 500 microns — the same width as five human hairs — in 22 hours , and they could burrow into lab - grown glioblastomas . “ This is a great start , ” says Frank Marini , a cancer biologist at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston - Salem , North Carolina , who was not involved with the study . “ Incredibly quick and relatively efficient . ” The team also engineered the cells to deliver common cancer treatments to glioblastomas in mice . Mouse tumors injected directly with the reprogrammed stem cells shrank 20 - to 50 - fold in 24 – 28 days compared with nontreated mice . In addition , the survival times of treated rodents nearly doubled . In some mice , the scientists removed tumors after they were established , and injected treatment cells into the cavity . Residual tumors , spawned from the remaining cancer cells , were 3 . 5 times smaller in the treated mice than in untreated mice . Marini notes that more rigorous testing is needed to demonstrate just how far the tumor - targeting cells can migrate . In a human brain , the cells would need to travel a matter of millimeters or centimeters , up to 20 times farther than the 500 microns tested here , he says . And other researchers question the need to use cells from the patient ’ s own skin . An immune response , triggered by foreign neural stem cells , could actually help attack tumors , says Evan Snyder , a stem cell biologist at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in San Diego , California , and one of the early pioneers of the idea of using stem cells to attack tumors . Hingtgen ’ s group is already testing how far their tumor - homing cells can migrate using larger animal models . They are also getting skin cells from glioblastoma patients to make sure the new method works for the people they hope to help , he says . “ Everything we ’ re doing is to get this to the patient as quickly as we can . ” already exploited this method using neural stem cells — which give rise to neurons and other brain cells — to is in people , in part because getting those neural stem cells is hard , says Shawn Hingtgen , a stem cell biologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill . Right now , there are three main ways . Scientists can either harvest the cells directly from the patient , harvest them from another patient , or they can genetically reprogram adult cells . But harvesting requires invasive surgery , and bestowing stem cell properties on adult cells takes a two - step process that can increase the risk of the final cells becoming cancerous . And using cells from someone other than the cancer patient being treated might trigger an immune response against the foreign cells 요약 : 뇌종양 은 외과 적 수술 을 통해서 치료 가 가능 하 기 때문 에 치료 가 힘들 다고 한다 . 이러 한 뇌종양 은 신경 줄기세포 를 유도 하 는 특별 한 화학 물질 을 발산 한다 . 이 특징 을 이용 하 여 , 신경 줄기세포 에 종양 제 거약 을 투여 하 여 암 제거 를 하 는 것 이 목적 이 하 지만 , 신경 줄기 세포 는 자칫 하 면 암 으로 전이 가 될 수 있 고 또 다른 사람 의 줄기세포 를 이용 하 면 면역 반응 이 와서 몸 에 해로운 영향 을 끼칠 수 가 있 다 . 해결 방법 은 성인 의 피부 세포 를 표준 줄기세포 로 변형 하 고 신경 줄기세포 로 전환 하 여 신경 줄기세포 를 유전 적 인 방법 을 통해서 얻 는다 이러 한 방법 의 문제점 은 신경 줄기세포 가 뇌 로 이동하 는 속도 가 너무 느리 다는 것 이 다 이것 에 대한 개선 방향 이 필요 해 보인다 .