ABOVE: The blood-brain barrier of a fruit fly with a tumor has broken down, allowing a tracer dye to enter the brain.
JUNG KIM
The goal of most cancer therapeutics is to eliminate or at least stop the growth of malignant cells. A study published September 7 in Developmental Cell points to a possible complementary strategy: reinforcing host defenses, specifically the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The authors found that tumors in the body can disturb the BBB and that interfering with this disruption seems to improve host health in both fruit flies and mice, even as tumor growth continues.
This work “shows that [breaking] the blood-brain barrier is at least one of the causes of death” in animals with cancer, says Wu-Min Deng, who studies tumorigenesis in Drosophila at Tulane University School of Medicine and was not involved in the study. It’s “a very good example of how the fly model can ...
