Glioblastoma is not limited to the brain — it corrodes the skull and “hijacks” the immune system in the bone marrow.
Cancer opens channels that allow inflammatory cells to enter the brain, fueling its deadly progression.
Even medications that protect bones can make the situation worse. Therefore, therapies that target both the brain and bones are needed.
Now one appears that shows that the glioblastoma – the most common and lethal form of malignant brain tumor – is a disease that affects the entire body; It’s not just a brain disorder.
Glioblastoma is much more invasive than previously thought — extending beyond the brain to corrode the skull and manipulate the immune system present in the cranial bone marrow.
Investigators at the Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center (MECCC) and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine discovered that glioblastoma tumors induce erosion of the skull, especially along the sutures where the cranial bones fuse.
Using advanced imaging techniques in rats, they observed that these erosions create channels that connect the bone marrow of the skull to the brain.
These channels allow inflammatory immune cells to pass from the cranial cord to the tumorfueling the aggressive growth of glioblastoma, explains .
Computed tomography scans in patients confirmed that skull thinning occurs in the same anatomical regions observed in rats.
The study showed that glioblastoma alters the immune environment of the cranial cord, drastically increasing pro-inflammatory myeloid cells, such as neutrophils, while practically eliminating B cells, essential for the production of antibodies.
This imbalance accelerates tumor progression and explains why current treatments — which treat glioblastoma as a disease localized to the brain — have limited effectiveness.
Interestingly, researchers found that the effect of glioblastoma is specific to the cranial cord.
The marrow of other bones, such as the femur, responded differently, suppressing the production of immune cells rather than triggering inflammation.
The team also tested medications approved to treat osteoporosis, to assess whether preventing bone loss could limit cranial erosion.
Both zoledronic acid and denosumab stopped skull erosion, but zoledronic acid unexpectedly accelerated tumor growth in a type of glioblastoma. Both drugs also blocked the effects of anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy, which increases the activity of T cells against tumors.
