Weekly pick of Neuroscience news from around the world

The essential problem with Chemotherapy is that it attacks all the rapidly dividing cells that it locates within the body, whether they're ultimately harmful or beneficial and these include hair follicles and cells that line the gastrointestinal tract. This attack on healthy cells causes serious side effects, which include hair loss, nausea, mood changes, pain, anaemia, nerve and muscle problems, and kidney issues.

Immunotherapy, on the other hand, is a type of biological therapy that uses the body's own immune system to seek out and destroy cancer cells. Engineered T cells (a type of lymphocyte which develops in the thymus gland and plays a central role in the immune response) have been proven very successful in treating blood cancer but attempts to use them to fight solid cancers have been disappointing until now. Get an overview on the latest developments by reading this piece (brain tumours have solid tumour cells) Engineered T cells may be harnessed to kill solid tumour cells.

News from our Plymouth centre here Phase 0 trial investigating the intratumoural concentration and activity of sorafenib in neurofibromatosis type 2.

Find out about some Glioblastoma research being undertaken in Spain by clicking here; Study may lead to new therapeutic methods for treating aggressive brain cancer.

An Ependymoma clinical trial is recruiting in the US – you can find out more about its construction here.

Finally, any progress at all with regards DIPG is to be welcomed Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, are working with Healx, a biotech company specialising in artificial intelligence (AI) to discover new possible ways of treating diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), an essentially untreatable brain cancer in children.