A joint research team of Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI) and Incheon National University has created a platform for developing therapies for brain cancer, known as an incurable disease.

The research team expects the platform will allow small cell chips to examine the interaction between glioblastoma and microglia, the brain immune cells, and determine the drug's efficacy and boost the development of therapeutic agents, KBSI said.

The research team, led by Dr. Kim Jeong-ah of KBSI and Professor Rhee Won-jong of Incheon National University, developed the platform for evaluating the efficacy of a drug that can regulate the immune activity of microglia, which plays an important role in the growth and treatment of brain cancer.

Glioblastoma is a brain cancer that occurs in glial cells of the brain and is the most common and severe type of tumor, accounting for 80 percent of primary malignant brain cancers. The five-year survival rate is lower than 7 percent despite surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy.

Microglia usually stays until it faces harmful substances their phagocytosis or various immune functions are required. Recently, microglia have drawn attention as new findings tell that it is involved in maintaining homeostasis and disease control to monitor and protect the brain. However, microglia also attacks normal cells or helps cancer grow under some circumstances, while they normally protect and recover brain function.

The joint research team made a drug by loading microRNAs that control gene expression in the body as a major factor regulating the interaction between brain cancer cells and microglia in the extracellular vesicles.

The extracellular vesicle is a carrier that safely transports microRNA to a desired place in the body and is a useful drug carrier that can pass through the blood-brain barrier.

The efficacy of the drug developed by the research team was verified in a three-dimensional cell chip made by simulating the brain environment in which brain cancer and microglia interact together.

Thanks to the new platform, researchers could observe and analyze the shape and movement of cultured cells and check the drug's efficacy in real-time. In addition, they could predict the activity of immunotherapy cells that appear through interactions among cells.

"The role of microglia is very important in the progression and treatment of brain cancer, and it is significant to develop a biomimetic platform that can enhance immune activity and accurately evaluate drug efficacy by controlling the environment that interacts with cancer," Dr. Kim said. "As a follow-up study, we are developing an AI-based imaging analysis method that can assess a large number of images with high efficiency."