Why don brain tumours respond to medication?
Malignant brain tumours often fail to respond to promising new medication. Researchers in Heidelberg have discovered a mechanism and a tumour marker for the development of this resistance. A ‘death receptor’ can possibly provide information as to how great the chances of success are for chemotherapy. At the same time, it offers a new approach for promising brain tumour therapy. Dr Wolf Mueller, senior consultant in the Neuropathology Department at the Institute of Pathology of Heidelberg University Hospital, and his team were able to show that certain brain tumours (astrocytomas) can deactivate a crucial protein on their cell surface, the so-called death receptor. The medication docks onto this receptor and causes the cells to die. An intact ‘death receptor’ can thus serve as a tumour marker for whether or not a therapy has a chance of success. The study was conducted with funding from the Tumour Centre of Heidelberg/Mannheim and was published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. P
