Undividing Attention

Since cancers arise when cells divide uncontrollably, you might think the one part of a tumour we don’t need to worry about is a group of cells that aren’t dividing. But recent research has suggested that these ‘senescent’ cells might be important to cancer development and a potential target for treatments. Researchers investigated senescent cells in glioblastomas – deadly brain tumours – in mice and human samples (extracted mouse glioblastoma cells pictured on an artificial matrix for growth and experimentation). Senescent cells make up less than 7% of the tumours, but removal of them resulted in improved survival of mice. With further experiments they identified a key protein, NRF2, coordinating senescence and found similar gene expression in these cells in mouse and human tumours. Cancers with a higher proportion of senescent cells are associated with shorter survival times, and new approaches targeting senescence could supplement existing treatments, improving the prognosis for patients.

March is Brain Tumour Awareness Month

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Rana Salam and Alexa Saliou, and colleagues Isabelle Le Roux Lab
• Paris Brain Institute (ICM), Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière, Inserm U 1127, CNRS UMR 7225, Sorbonne Université, Genetics and Development of Brain Tumors Team, Paris, France
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
• Research published in Nature Communications, January 2023