How tumour cells change shape – new method could improve cancer treatment
Researchers at IGP have developed an advanced computational model that can reveal how tumour cells ‘think’ when they change shape. This opens up new possibilities for treating severe brain tumours such as glioblastoma and medulloblastoma.
The method is called single-cell regulatory-driven clustering, or scregclust in short, and it allows researchers to analyse large amounts of data from individual cells to map how different regulatory molecules control the transformation of tumour cells into other cell types. This is important because tumour cells that can switch to a state similar to immune cells are often more resistant to treatment.
By applying scregclust to tumours of the nervous system – such as glioblastoma in adults and medulloblastoma in children – the researchers identified specific molecules and gene regulatory factors that drive these changes. Among these, they found factors that may play a key role in transforming tumour cells into forms that survive treatments better.
“With our method, we can now understand in more detail how tumour cells are controlled and shaped. This gives us the opportunity to find new approaches to make tumour cells more susceptible to treatment,” says Ida Larsson, first author of the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
The research team hopes that scregclust will pave the way for tailored drugs that target the different conditions of tumour cells, and eventually improve treatment outcomes for patients with brain tumours that are difficult to treat.