While great therapeutic advances have been made for other cancers over the past 10 years, unfortunately, the treatment of brain tumours has not. However, advances in the understanding of biological mechanisms and in the molecular characterization of tumours are opening up very promising avenues.
Treatment Approaches for Brain Tumour
With regard to chemotherapy, which may be combined with surgery or radiotherapy, clinicians encounter a recurring problem in neurological and psychiatric diseases, the passage of the blood-brain barrier. This cellular barrier that surrounds the brain and spinal cord has the role of protecting the brain from any potentially dangerous agent and thus acts as a filter that limits the entry of cells, viruses, bacteria and molecules such as drugs.
Thus, a major challenge in the treatment of brain tumours is to get drugs into the brain that target only cancer cells and are not toxic to the surrounding cells of the tumour.
At Paris Brain Institute
Maïté VERRAULT of the team of Professor Marc SANSON and Dr Emmanuelle HUILLARD coordinates the GLIOTEX project, whose objective is to test the effectiveness of treatments already on the market and prescribed for other pathologies on tumour cells derived from brain tumours of patients and from new molecules with a therapeutic aim.
This project makes it possible to identify the most promising treatments through experimental models before offering them to patients in therapeutic trials.
Dactinomycin, a treatment used in other cancers, is currently being tested at Paris Brain Institute for its effectiveness on glioblastomas. If the effect of this molecule on tumour cells is now proven in vitro in the laboratory, it is now necessary to increase the lifetime of this drug in the body and above all to facilitate its entry into the brain via the blood-brain barrier. This project is the subject of a collaboration with the start-up Carthera Inc. within the iPEPS of Paris Brain Institute.
The start-up carthera at the Brain Institute developed the “SonoCloud” device in collaboration with the neurosurgery group (Professor Alexandre CARPENTIER, coordinator of iCRIN neurosurgery at the Brain Institute) and neuro-oncology (Professor Ahmed IDBAIH, coordinator of iCRIN neuro-oncology at Paris Brain Institute) at the Salpetrière Hospital. This device allows temporary permeabilization of the Encephalic Hemato Barrier through the emission of Ultrasounds. This device allows drugs to enter the brain and improve the effectiveness of treatments.
