Projects we fund

Overview

DIPG is currently incurable, and while conventional therapies like radiotherapy can bring temporary improvement, ultimately children diagnosed with this tumour only survive for about a year. So we are urgently seeking new ways to combat this deadly cancer. Although it is possible for drugs to cross the BBB, current delivery methods mean that repeated dosing is complicated and very invasive – and the way that DIPG tumours spread into the surrounding brain tissues limits their effectiveness. As his basis for this research project, Dr Hajitou believes that finding a way to combine targeted delivery to the tumour with systemic delivery through the BBB in one single delivery platform would give doctors a much better chance of treating DIPG. Scientists have developed a viral-based approach, using a virus called M13 bacteriophage, which can cross the BBB, and doesn’t attack healthy human tissues. In this project Dr Hajitou will be building on that research to see whether this combined with another substance could form the basis of a new therapy for children with DIPG.

Potential impact

Dr Hajitou expects that his laboratory experiments will show that this viral approach will target DIPG, upon intravenous administration, resulting in selective nucleic acid delivery to tumours. This should produce significant anti-tumour effects, resulting in DIPG regression, whilst being less toxic to healthy tissues than existing therapies. He also believes that this treatment can be safely repeated to further reduce the tumour. Developing this method of treatment should provide an effective platform for the selective delivery of therapeutic nucleic acids, including immunostimulatory genes, in a guided immunotherapy to fight paediatric brain tumours. If successful, this lab-based research will ultimately lead to therapies which can be used to treat children with DIPG, and as some of the crucial elements of this therapy have already been used safely to treat children with other conditions, these treatments could potentially be developed quite quickly. Drug companies have already expressed interest in developing these treatments, so this research project represents a vital step towards new forms of therapy to successfully treat not only DIPG, but other types of brain tumours affecting children.