For decades, we’ve viewed glioblastoma as a strictly local brain malignancy. It turns out, it’s actually a systemic disease that physically remodels and even dissolves the skull.

In my latest feature for Medscape, I break down a years-long study at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine that reveals how glioblastoma activates osteoclasts, which eat away at and dissolve the top of the skull to create porous channels.

These channels then act as a highway of sorts, allowing the tumor to hijack the skull’s bone marrow so it stops producing cancer-fighting lymphocytes and instead pumps out a flood of myeloid cells that protect the tumor.

Most surprising of all, when the researchers used standard osteoporosis drugs like zoledronic acid and anti-RANKL antibodies to save the skull bone, it actually protected the tumor, whereby it continued to pump out a supply of immune-suppressing cells unfettered.

This stunning finding challenges how we manage bone loss in glioblastoma patients, pointing us toward more specific immunotherapy targets rather than standard bone-preserving drugs.

We’ve known that Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC) aggressively targets the brain, but how it thrives there has been a mystery until now.

I break down new findings showing that SCLC cells actually integrate into neural circuits, forming synapses with neurons to feed on electrical signals.

It’s a insidious little mechanism, but identifying it opens the door to using common neuro-drugs as cancer treatments.

New research identifies a specific enzyme in common gut bacteria, a “sleeping pathogen”, that targets pain receptors in the gut, causing them to fire indefinitely.

Better yet, we may have a cure on our hands already: Nanoparticles designed to smuggle drugs into the specific cellular compartments where these pain signals hide.

I take a look at the future of this fascinating non-opioid pain management for inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome, and the scientists who discovered and engineered it.

For over a century, the hallmark of Parkinson’s—Lewy bodies—has been an enigma. Why do some patients with many have mild symptoms, while others with few are devastated?

We may have been looking at the wrong culprit.

I dive into a breakthrough discovery of nanoscale protein clumps, alpha-synuclein oligomers, that were hiding in plain sight. A new imaging technique finally allows researchers to see them in human brains, and what they found is a complete surprise.

The brain protects itself with a fascinating ‘sugar shield,’ but this defense weakens as we age. I delve into the groundbreaking research that could turn this shield into a powerful therapeutic target in the fight against cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases.