Wikipedia says that “herding cats†refers to an attempt to control or organize a class of entities that are uncontrollable or chaotic.
Cancer cells certainly qualify as uncontrollable or chaotic, so the metaphor could apply to a recent Nature Materials paper from Georgia Tech and Emory’s Ravi Bellamkonda – a member of Winship Cancer Institute.
Glioblastoma is the worst of the worst: the most common and the most aggressive form of brain tumor in adults. The tumors are known to invade healthy tissue and migrate along white matter tracts and blood vessels. Bellamkonda and his colleagues devised a strategy for luring glioblastoma cells out of the brain by offering the cells attractive nanofibers that the cells will Ray Ban outlet attempt to invade. When the cells arrive, they undergo apoptosis — cellular suicide. He has called this “an engineer’s approach to brain cancer†(in a lecture a couple months ago) and “the Pied Piper approach” (in the video below).
(It’s not the first time Bellamkonda has unfurled dazzling technology against glioblastoma, developed with an Emory collaborator.)
Bellamkonda’s collaborator this time, Tobey Macdonald, director of pediatric neuro-oncology at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, is credited in the paper with coming up with the aspect of the strategy that was based on the molecule cyclopamine. This earlier story from CHOA provides more background on how the collaboration came together.
Cyclopamine
Cyclopamine is key to the “lure ’em out and kill ’em” strategy. Most high-grade brain tumors overproduce a protein called Sonic Hedgehog, spurring their growth. Cyclopamine is selectively toxic only to cells that are dependent on Sonic Hedgehog. Cyclopamine’s name comes from how it was discovered: through its teratogenic effects on sheep in Idaho that ate corn lily flowers.
About the author
