Gliomas exploit immune cells of the brain for rapid expansion
Thursday, July 16, 2009 - 13:42
in Biology & Nature
Gliomas are among the most common and most malignant brain tumors. These tumors infiltrate normal brain tissue and grow very rapidly. As a result, surgery can never completely remove the tumor. Now, the neurosurgeons Dr. Darko S. Markovic (Helios Klinikum Berlin-Buch) and Dr. Michael Synowitz (Charité) as well as Dr. Rainer Glass and Professor Helmut Kettenmann (both Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, MDC, Berlin-Buch), have been able to show that glioma cells exploit microglia, the immune cells of the brain, for their expansion (PNAS Early Edition).