As the temperature starts to increase so does the risk of melanoma – and many don’t realise how readily this cancer spreads from a mole to the brain. New research is now providing hope and important insights for those at risk.
Once cancer starts growing in the brain, it’s particularly deadly, with only 10 to 30 percent of patients surviving for five years after diagnosis. That’s why Dr Akshata Anchan from the University of Auckland is studying ways to stop cancers breaking through the brain’s defences.
Brain cancer usually doesn’t start in the brain
More than 70 percent of brain cancers don’t begin in the brain – they start in other parts of the body, says Anchan, who works across the University’s Centre for Brain Research and Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology. After cancer cells spread into the bloodstream, they can migrate to any part of the body, she says.
Anchan is focused on melanomas and cancers of the lung and breast, because these are the cancers that pose the biggest risk of spreading into the brain. “As many as 90 percent of melanomas eventually migrate to the brain. It has the highest propensity to become brain cancer, and most patients with advanced melanoma will eventually develop brain cancer,” she says.
Anchan is studying the tactics cancer cells use to sneak through the protective barriers that typically stop bacteria and viruses entering the brain. “We want to know if there’s are particular mechanisms, like secret weapons, that cancers use to break down the barriers and enter blood vessels in the brain. “If we can find their secret weapons, we can try to destroy them or block them with a drug.”
New research in preventing brain cancer
Anchan’s team’s groundbreaking research discovered a byproduct produced by cancer cells, called large vesicular bodies. These appear to carry a cargo that disintegrates the brain’s protective barriers. Her research holds the potential that a simple blood test could detect when patients have high levels of cancer byproducts in their blood, signalling a higher risk of brain cancer. “If we can pick up early which patients have a cancer that’s likely to spread to their brain, stronger treatments could be offered before it’s too late.”
Her experiments involve growing barrier-forming brain cells in the lab, adding samples of patient-derived melanoma cells to the petri dish, then watching what happens. One way of testing how impenetrable the brain-cell barrier remains in the face of cancer cells is to use an electrical pulse and measure how much current flows through.
Developing world-first system
With a grant from the Li Liangren Family Trust distributed by the University’s Centre for Cancer Research, Anchan plans to add the dynamics of blood-flow to her static, lab-dish experiment. She is working with University of Auckland scientists Dr James Hucklesby and Dr Catherine Angel to invent a world-first system to replicate the way cancer cells in the bloodstream flow past brain cells.“ This is very cool new technology that will show us more realistically how cancer cells in the bloodstream break through the brain’s barriers,” she says.
After moving to New Zealand from India at the age of 10, Anchan began studying melanoma during her PhD at the University of Auckland from 2017. Winning several prestigious awards has helped the 31-year-old launch her research career. Fellowships from the Neurological Foundation, Royal Society – Te Apārangi, and Cancer Research Trust New Zealand have supported her work on stopping cancers invading the brain.
“Melanoma is relatively easy to treat when it’s on the skin. “But cancers in the brain are extremely difficult to treat, so we need to find ways to stop these cancers making the deadly transition into brain tumours,” she says.
