Finding new drugs to fight a rare aggressive childhood brain tumour

The Huang Lab is investigating new drug treatments for an understudied childhood brain cancer. Pineoblastoma is an aggressive brain tumour with a survival rate less than 50%, but little is known about it because it is very rare. Dr. Huang’s team has discovered that pineoblastoma cells may be hijacking a normal cellular process called autophagy, where the cell under conditions of stress or scarcity breaks down and recycles old or damaged parts of itself so it can continue functioning. Pineoblastoma may be using autophagy to persist in patients despite treatments. In this project the Huang Lab will test drugs that are known to disrupt autophagy on pineoblastoma cells to determine which ones can slow the cells’ growth. They are also developing genetically engineered fish that grow pineoblastoma-like tumours. They will test drug treatments on their fish to discover drugs that can block pineoblastoma’s ability to use autophagy. They aim to find drugs that could improve outcomes for children with this rare and poorly understood cancer.