In an innovative new study of glioblastoma, scientists used artificial intelligence (AI) to reprogram cancer cells, converting them into dendritic cells (DCs), which can identify cancer cells and direct other immune cells to kill them.

Glioblastoma is the most common brain cancer in adults and also the deadliest, with less than 10% of patients surviving five years after their diagnosis. While new approaches such as immunotherapy have revolutionized treatment for other cancers, they have done little for patients with glioblastoma. That is partly because these hard-to-reach brain tumors hide behind the blood-brain barrier, where immune cells struggle to reach and eliminate them.

But new research, supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and led by the Keck School of Medicine of USC, has leveraged AI to explore which genes control a cell’s fate — whether it develops into a heart cell, a lung cell or a cancer cell, for instance. The researchers identified genes that can reprogram glioblastoma cells, converting them into immune cells within the tumor itself so they effectively target their kin cancer cells for destruction.

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