IIT Bombay Study Reveals Why Deadly Brain Cancer Returns

A very dangerous brain cancer called glioblastoma usually comes back after treatment, and when it returns it is even harder to treat.

Scientists at IIT Bombay wanted to find out why this happens.

They discovered that the softness of the brain matters a lot for how the cancer behaves.

For a long time, scientists studied cancer cells on hard plastic dishes, which does not match the real brain.

On those hard dishes, returning cancer cells looked the same as the first cancer cells, so scientists could not see what made them different.

But when the same cells were grown on soft gels that feel like brain tissue, they became more aggressive and moved around more, just like in patients.

The scientists also found a special protein called PLEKHA7 that only showed up when cells grew on soft gels and was higher in patients whose cancer had returned.

When they blocked this protein, the tumours grew and spread much less.

They also found that a molecule called NEAT1 helped cancer act more aggressively in a soft brain-like environment, and lowering its levels slowed the cancer.

This shows that testing cancer drugs in brain-like soft gels could help scientists create better treatments.