{"id":152317,"date":"2025-11-25T04:29:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T04:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/152317\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T04:29:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T04:29:16","slug":"nasal-drops-could-help-fight-a-common-and-deadly-brain-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/152317\/","title":{"rendered":"Nasal Drops Could Help Fight a Common And Deadly Brain Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers have developed nasal drops that travel along the nerves of the nose into the central nervous system to fight the deadliest brain cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Preliminary test results reveal that the medication safely reached its target, helping protect mice against these usually fatal tumors.<\/p>\n

“This is an approach that offers hope for safer, more effective treatments for glioblastoma and potentially other immune treatment-resistant cancers, and it marks a critical step toward clinical application,” says<\/a> neurosurgeon Alexander Stegh of Washington University.<\/p>\n

“This redefines how cancer<\/a> immunotherapy can be achieved in otherwise difficult-to-access tumors.”<\/p>\n

Related: New Vaccine For Deadly Brain Cancer Shows Incredible Results in Clinical Trial<\/a><\/p>\n

Glioblastoma<\/a> tumors are highly aggressive<\/a>, hard to detect early<\/a>, and deactivate<\/a> our body’s typical immune response, making them challenging to target with traditional cancer therapies.<\/p>\n

They’re also very hard to reach, given they form in the brain or elsewhere along our delicate central nervous systems.<\/p>\n

This nasty cancer impairs brain functions<\/a> by causing swelling in surrounding healthy tissues, compressing them, and stealing their blood supply.<\/p>\n

\"MRI<\/p>\n

Previously<\/a>, researchers devised a way to alert mice immune systems to the cryptic cancer’s presence by stimulating interferon genes<\/a> in the cancer cells (STING). Interferon genes usually alert the body to a viral infection.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, drugs that achieve this break down rapidly in the body, requiring multiple invasive administrations to reach the tumor directly.<\/p>\n

Washington University neuroscientist Akanksha Mahajan and colleagues developed a simpler way to deliver drugs where they’re needed using nanotechnology.<\/p>\n

“We really wanted to minimize patients having to go through that when they are already ill, and I thought that we could use the spherical nucleic acid platforms to deliver these drugs in a noninvasive way,” explains<\/a> Mahajan.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribe to ScienceAlert’s free fact-checked newsletter<\/p>\n

They transformed STING-activating molecules into spherical genetic material to maintain their stability for longer. To achieve this, the researchers wrapped the genetic material around a gold nanoparticle core.<\/p>\n

The team then tested their medicine in mice with glioblastomas. They found that their gold-mounted genetic instructions successfully activated the STING pathway to inhibit tumor growth.<\/p>\n

“With this research, we’ve shown that precisely engineered nanostructures, called spherical nucleic acids, can safely and effectively activate powerful immune pathways within the brain,” says<\/a> Stegh.<\/p>\n

The researchers caution there’s still a long way to go before human clinical trials<\/a>, and this tactic will need to be backed up by other methods of attack, as the cancer cells can circumvent the STING pathway.<\/p>\n

But when the nose drops were paired with other drugs designed to boost immunity, the researchers were able to induce long-term immunity against glioblastoma in the mice.<\/p>\n

Glioblastoma is the most common malignant brain cancer. Only 6.9 percent<\/a> of patients survive beyond five years after diagnosis.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube<\/p>\n

YouTube Thumbnail<\/p>\n

“When my grandmother developed metastatic brain tumors after being diagnosed with end-stage breast cancer, I experienced the vicious toll the disease had on her and everyone around her,” Stegh has explained<\/a> previously.<\/p>\n

“Her battle inspired me to confront this insidious disease, and my education and training led me to do so by pioneering a better understanding of the genetics behind brain tumors.”<\/p>\n

This research was published in PNAS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers have developed nasal drops that travel along the nerves of the nose into the central nervous system…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[101454,13507,54835,101453,134,111,139,69,2214,57437],"class_list":{"0":"post-152317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-alexander-stegh","9":"tag-brain-cancer","10":"tag-cancer-cells","11":"tag-glioblastoma-treatment","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-researchers","17":"tag-sting"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}