Finding New Targets for Glioblastoma
Immunotherapy Treatments
Fast facts
- Title: Lipid Nanoparticles Nucleic Acids Delivery for Therapeutic Targets Identification for Glioblastoma Immunotherapy
- Lead Researcher: Professor Khuloud Al-Jamal
- Where: Kings College London
- When: September 2024 – August 2026
- Cost: £150,000 over 2 years
- Research type: Glioblastoma (High grade), Adult, Academic
- Grant round: Expanding Theories
Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common aggressive brain tumour in adults. The prognosis for patients with a GBM is poor due to several factors including tumour recurrence, lack of effective treatments, poor responses to existing treatment, and suppression of the immune system.
What is it?
Professor Khuloud Al-Jamal is looking into how to advance current immunotherapy treatments for GBM, the most aggressive type of brain tumour in adults.
GBM is difficult to treat because it tricks the immune system into not attacking the cancer cells. It does this by producing too many of a type of molecule (called “immune checkpoints”) that dampen the immune system, and not enough of the molecules that activate the immune system to kill the tumour cells.
Although some therapies that can block or enhance these molecules have shown success in treating other types of cancer, they have not yet worked well in brain tumours. Professor Al-Jamal and her team are trying to change this.
Their research uses tiny particles, known as lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), to deliver special instructions to the immune system. These nanoparticles are ten thousand times smaller than a human hair and contain genetic information. Their goal is to use these nanoparticles to switch off the molecules that prevent the immune system from attacking glioblastoma and switch on those that encourage the immune system to fight the cancer cells
Why is it important?
The research will identify the best combinations of these molecules to target, hoping to find a way to make the immune system more effective at fighting glioblastoma. This could lead to new immunotherapy treatments for patients and families affected by this devastating disease.
Prof Khuloud Al-Jamal
“We know much more about this disease than we used to. Now, we are able to tackle some of the challenges of treating brain tumours by having new technologies that have been shown to work with other types of tumours.”
Research is just one other way your regular gift can make a difference
Research is the only way we will discover kinder, more effective treatments and, ultimately, stamp out brain tumours – for good! However, brain tumours are complex and research in to them takes a great deal of time and money.
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In this section
Prof Khuloud Al-Jamal
Professor Khuloud Al-Jamal is a Global STEM Professor at Department of Pharmacology & Pharmacy at the University of Hong Kong and the Chair of Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine at King’s College London. She was awarded the CW Maplethorpe Research and Teaching Postdoctoral Fellowship from The University of London (2005-2007) to explore growth inhibitors in solid and metastatic tumours. Her current work involves pre-clinical translation of novel nanomaterials designed specifically for drug delivery for therapeutic or diagnostic applications.