Hyperstimulation of Potassium Channel Inhibits Growth and Invasion in Brain Cancer

What is it about?

Gliomas are highly aggressive brain tumours that have few treatment options available. The current standard of care typically involves surgery, followed by chemotherapy with the drug temozolomide, in addition to radiotherapy. However, prognosis remains poor and there has not been any significant improvement in the survival of glioma patients over the last 20 years. Recent research has identified that certain ion channels, that regulate the flow ions in cells, could be targeted for cancer treatment. One such cannel is a voltage gated potassium channel, known as hERG, that has shown promising results in both breast cancer and melanoma models. The hERG channel may be specifically targeted with the drug NS1643 which hyper-stimulates the channel. This study demonstrates the presence of hERG channels in anaplastic astrocytoma cells, a subtype of glioma, and that treatment with NS1643 results in both reduced growth and invasivity of the glioma cells. Moreover, NS1643 worked well in combination with temozolomide, suggesting that NS1643 could be combined with current treatments to reduce both growth and invasiveness of gliomas.

Featured Image

Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash

Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Gliomas are a devastating disease that have limited efficacious treatment options. The current standard of care follows the Stupp protocol, which consists of temozolomide and radiotherapy following maximal safe resection. However, glioma cells that survive the Stupp protocol display a more invasive phenotype. Given that virtually all gliomas, particularly high-grade gliomas, recur addressing this increased invasivity is crucial in improving patient outcomes in glioma. The decrease in migration following NS1643 treatment in the anaplastic astrocytoma cell line SMA-560 indicates that NS1643 may be a suitable drug to address this issue. Moreover, given that NS1643 combines well with temozolomide to reduce the growth of glioma cells indicates that NS1643 could be integrated well with the current standard of care.