New drug combination suppresses cancer cells from children’s brain tumor

A research team led by Fredrik Swartling (Uppsala University/SciLifeLab) has discovered that medulloblastoma, the most common type of malignant brain tumor in children, can be effectively suppressed by combining two treatment strategies, disrupting both the expression and stabilization of the protein MYC. The MYC protein acts as a transcription factor that governs the expression of many important genes. It is often overproduced in medulloblastoma and correlates with poor disease prognosis. In addition, the researchers successfully show that both substances pass the blood-brain barrier, which often presents an obstacle when developing drugs that need to be delivered to the central nervous system. The study was enabled by NGI and NBIS at SciLifeLab.

Read the full paper in Oncogene

Read the press release by Uppsala University