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

胶质母细胞瘤（GBM）是成人中最具侵袭性和常见的脑肿瘤。即使肿瘤可以手术切除，手术后留下的肿瘤细胞的迁移也经常引起复发。这些细胞沿着健康的脑组织移动，深入大脑，不可避免地再次改造肿瘤。GBM无法治愈。一旦确诊并进行手术，患者的预期生存期为14个月。在过去的20年里，尽管每年有25万例病例，但仍有70种新药和1000项研究失败。Migration Biotherapeutics开发了一种创新的生物工程材料，可以为GBM提供新的治疗选择。ALIGHT（轴突样可植入胶质母细胞瘤捕获器）是由装饰有生物信号的工程纳米纤维制成的，以吸引GBM细胞向该装置靠近，而不是渗透到健康的脑组织中，本质上起着“诱饵神经”的作用。这一应用提供了一种新的范例，即“劫持”引导癌细胞迁移的信号。与其他方法不同，我们的建议将“细胞生物学作为一种治疗方法”，并打算利用癌细胞的自然迁移来获得新的治疗选择。ALIGHT有多种潜在用途，在本研究中，我们将挑战假设并绘制不同发展战略的机会。我们将探索一种植入术后腔内的医疗设备的发展，这种设备将吸引残留的细胞进行进一步治疗，或者通过导管将它们引导出大脑。我们还将评估体外测定的需求和潜在的商业机会，以量化候选药物在药物发现过程中对迁移的影响。临床医生也向我们提出了在中枢神经系统中进一步应用的建议，我们希望在这项针对性研究的过程中了解更多这些机会。

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.