Investigating the role of an amino acid to find a better treatment for children with medulloblastom

Medulloblastoma is the most common type of brain cancer found in babies, children and young adults. It is a cancer that is very variable because there are lots of different genetic mutations that can affect way it grows - meaning that not all medulloblastomas respond well to treatment, with some being particularly difficult to treat. In particular, children whose cancers have increased levels of MYC genes are very resistant to treatment and therefore have the worst chance of survival. While all medulloblastoma need better and kinder treatments, it is particularly urgent for children with MYC-driven medulloblastoma. The biggest changes for these children will only happen through a better understanding of what these cancers need to grow and resist treatment.

One common trait of those medulloblastoma with increased MYC is that their growth and resistance to treatment is dependent on an amino acid known as glutamine. They use this amino acid to make the building blocks that they require to grow and to repair the damage caused by chemotherapy and radiotherapy. If there was a way of stopping the medulloblastoma cells from using glutamine, it could slow down their growth and make them more responsive to normal treatments. This could mean that doctors might be able to reduce the amount of treatment needed to treat children living with medulloblastoma, giving them the best possible chance of having good quality of life after treatment.

In this project, Professor Daniel Tennant at the University of Birmingham aims to find out exactly how medulloblastoma cells use glutamine. This is the first step towards understanding how to block glutamine in order to treat MYC-driven medulloblastoma patients. His team will look at how the cancer cells support their growth, and how they use it to resist dying after chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Excitingly, there are already some drugs in early clinical trials that target glutamine use by other cancers. However, as there is not yet the evidence to confirm that targeting glutamine is a good idea in medulloblastoma, this idea can’t yet be put into clinical trials.

This project will therefore investigate whether using this drug might work in medulloblastoma as, if successful, it might be possible introduce it for children more quickly than developing new treatments from scratch. Professor Tennant will also look at what the best way of targeting glutamine use is, to see whether a better treatment could be developed in the long term.