transplanted NSCs grown from iPSCs into the brain frequently report that iPSCs also have a really REALLY frustrating tendency to become cancerous tumour cells… and you’re not going to fix brain cancer by sticking more in there!
So what’s different about this paper? Simple; they used transdifferentiation. What the heck is transdifferentiation? I’m glad you asked. It’s a method similar to iPSC generation, except that instead of reprogramming cells to a pluripotent state, you reprogram them directly into the cell type you want. In this case they took fibroblasts (skin cells) and transdifferentiated them into NSCs, and named these new cells induced neural stem cells (iNSC). Crucially, these iNSC don’t seem to have the same tendency to become cancerous, yet they retain all those benefits of iPSCs outlined above! The researchers found that by injecting these iNSC into mice with glioblastomas, their survival increased between 160%-220%!
The iNSCs aren’t ready for clinics yet. For instance, one problem the paper outlines is that their iNSCs need a structure to help target the right parts of the brain, because otherwise they wander off before they’ve killed all the cancer. But, because these cells work so well, the scientists are confident the work only needs refinements*, so maybe one day in the not too distant future we can expect to be killing brain cancers with our brains!**
- Statistics Fact Sheet, 2015, Macmillan Cancer Support
- World Cancer Report, 2014, World Health Organisation
- Bagó, J.R., Alfonso-Pecchio, A., Okolie, O., Dumitru, R., Rinkenbaugh, A., Baldwin, A.S., Miller, C.R., Magness, S.T. and Hingtgen, S.D. (2016) Therapeutically engineered induced neural stem cells are tumour-homing and inhibit progression of glioblastoma. Nature communications, 7.
*Of course, ‘refinements’ usually translates to another decade or two of work.
**Disclaimer: This statement is technically true, though your ‘cancer killing brain’ might actually be skin cells that have been turned into genetically modified brain cells. 😉 TECHNICALITY!