Transforming the Fight Against Brain Cancer: Breakthrough Innovations

One of the most challenging cancers in the world remains brain cancer. This disease has affected millions of peoples lives worldwide and continues to do so. Though brain cancer is a deadly disease, science and technology has truly led to breakthroughs in the cure and treatment of this condition. Through the many advancements in the field, there have been significant findings, here are some of the innovative techniques used in the fight against this disease.

Use of Immunotherapy:

Cancer treatment has been revolutionized by Immunotherapy, and its effectiveness in battling brain cancer is rising. Immunotherapy helps by using the body’s immune system to its advantage and identifying cancer cells and attacking them. Checkpoint inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy are the various strategies in immunotherapy that are being studied and explored to treat brain tumours.

Targeted Drug Delivery Mechanisms:

One of the significant challenges in treating brain cancer is the blood-brain barrier, as it limits the efficacy of traditional treatment methods. Today, this challenge is no longer relevant as nanoparticles, liposomes, polymer-based drug delivery mechanisms are being used to target the tumour site in the patient. These revolutionary carriers get into the blood-brain barrier and maximize the effectiveness of the treatment drugs while causing minimal to no damage to the healthy brain tissue and cells.

Optogenetics:

One of the emerging fields in the field is one that mixes genetics and optics to take control of the neural activity in the brain and this is done using light- sensitive proteins. When it comes to brain cancer treatment, optogenetics has a lot of potential. There are different ways to engineer these cancerous cells to express light sensitive proteins. If this is done, they can manipulate the activity of cancer cells by stopping their growth. This treatment is still in the early stages of being administered however it shows the cutting-edge tech that can result in fewer fatalities.

Magnetic Hyperthermia:

Though this is not a new concept, hyperthermia basically refers to the use of heat to kill cancer cells. However, the use of magnetic hyperthermia has shown significant promise in being effective for the treatment of brain cancer. Magnetic hyperthermia basically refers to using magnetic nanoparticles that are injected into tumor sites, alternatively a magnetic field is also applied alongside. This process generates heath inside the nanoparticles resulting in selective destruction of the cancer cells while keeping the health cells unharmed.

These are the most advanced methods that have emerged in recent times. Immunotherapy, targeted drug delivery systems, optogenetics, and magnetic hyperthermia are some of the most cutting-edge technologies that are changing the landscape of brain cancer treatment.

by Dr Gaurav Goel, Consultant Surgical oncologist, HCG Jaipur