Armenise-Harvard Symposium Symposium Explores Role of Genetics in Brain Cancer Neurons may be the principal actors of the brain but, like many prima donnas, they depend on a retinue of helpers to enhance their function of sending messages. This beneficial arrangement is subverted in people suffering from malignant brain tumors.
Glia divide uncontrollably, forming masses called glioblastomas that are difficult to treat.
Some send out tentacles that cannot be surgically removed. In addition, individual tumor cells may break off and cross the corpus callosum, the band of tissue bridging the two halves of the brain, setting up new centers of disease. Because these migrant cells do not divide during their journey, and may even remain dormant in their new lairs, they elude chemotherapeutic agents designed to track down and kill dividing cancer cells. Our aim was to make a model that allows greater control of lesions and also dissection of genetic events that in the future might allow for better diagnosis and treatment. Speakers at the symposium, attended by over 200 people, pinpointed some of the mutant genes that cause glial cells to relentlessly divide and outlined strategies to arrest the process.