Market Feasibility for a Engineering Biology Approach to Cell Therapy for Brain Cancer and Regenerative Medicine

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Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most aggressive and common brain tumour in adults. Even when a tumour can be surgically resected, recurrence often occurs caused by the migration of tumour cells left behind after surgery. These cells travel along healthy brain tissue to infiltrate deeper into the brain and inevitably reform the tumour again. There is no cure for GBM. Once diagnosed and operated on, patients have an expected survival of 14 months. Over the past 20 years, 70 new drugs and 1000 studies have failed in spite of 250,000 cases every year. Migration Biotherapeutics has developed an innovative bioengineered material that could unlock new therapeutic options in GBM. ALIGHT (tm) (Axon-Like Implantable Glioblastoma Harvesting Trap) is made of engineered nanofibers decorated with biological signal to attract GBM cells towards the device instead of infiltrating into healthy brain tissue, essentially acting as a 'decoy nerve.' This application offers a new paradigm, that of 'highjacking' the signals that guidethe migration of cancer cells. Different from other approaches, our proposals brings'cell biology as a therapy' and intends to exploit the natural migration of the cancercells towards new therapeutic options. There are multiple potential uses of ALIGHT and in this study, we will be challenging assumptions and mapping the opportunities for different development strategies. We will be exploring the development of a medical device to be implanted in the post-surgical cavity, which will attract residual cells for further treatment or direct them out of the brain through a catheter. We will also be assessing the demand and potential commercial opportunity for an in vitro assay to quantify drug candidates' effects on migration during the drug discovery process. Further applications in CNS have also been suggested to us by clinicians, and we hope to learn more about these opportunities in the course of this targeted research.