If I could add more of any cell to my body, there are a lot of good choices,  but I’d want more brain cells.

And if I could get rid of any kind of  cell from the human body in general, my first choice would be cancer cells. Which is why I’m so excited about this research that literally turns horrible cancer  cells into amazing brain cells!

We’re on the road to making some of the  deadliest stuff on earth less deadly, and in return we get more functional brain cells. Take that, cancer! [♪ INTRO] There are a lot of cancers that  used to be a death sentence. But with modern screening practices and  the triple threat of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, many people live years  beyond an initial cancer diagnosis.

Glioblastoma is not one of those cancers. It has a median survival time  of 15-18 months after diagnosis. Partly because it’s especially hard to treat.

It grows in this really hard to reach area,  behind a wall of bone... AKA your skull. Plus, if you manage to breach that wall,  so much of the stuff behind it is critical.

You don’t want to take out the part of  your brain that stores all of your memories or keeps your balance while you move  around unless you really have to. While that makes surgery harder, it’s  less of a problem for chemotherapy, which can go through your blood, naturally  circulating to your brain anyway. The issue with chemo is a little  thing called the blood-brain barrier.

See, if anything manages to make  its way into your bloodstream, your body still has some defenses  against letting it into your brain. You have a tightly-packed layer of cells  that prevents certain large molecules from flooding your brain. …And that  means fewer chemotherapy options. Then you’re left with  radiotherapy, which might entail daily localized doses of  radiation for a few months.

This kills your cells by damaging their DNA. Considering the limitations of cancer  treatment in your brain compared with the rest of your body, this combo of surgery, chemo, and radiation is often not enough. Some of the cancer cells usually survive.

And glioblastoma is almost always deadly. But maybe, just maybe, there’s a  way we can make those cancer cells that remain less deadly… by making  them more like regular brain cells. Now, when I say “regular brain cells,”  that can mean a few different things.

You’ve got your neurons signalling away and you’ve also got glia acting  as your brain’s immune cells. Each of these cells started  out as neural stem cells and turned into neurons and glia  thanks to molecules like cAMP. Normally, those new brain cells will then  go off to perform healthy brain functions.

No cancer. No worries. Well, like worrying is actually like  a literal function of your brain, so maybe just no cancer.

Except when things go awry. After stem cells have differentiated into glia, those glial cells can start replicating  out of control to form glioblastomas. This is something we’re desperately trying to reverse in laboratories across the world.

Several research teams have attempted  therapies to get these glioblastoma cells to go back to their pre-cancer  selves …with limited success. So a research group at UCLA set their  sights on nudging those glioblastoma cells back into their previous, non-lethal life stages. With a not-so-novel step one: radiation.

But before we can explain how  they’re working on solving this incredibly difficult  problem, it’s time for a quick ad. You watch SciShow. So we know you’re curious and you  think it’s good to learn new stuff.

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Brilliant’s also given our viewers 20%  off an annual Premium subscription, which gives you unlimited daily  access to everything on Brilliant. From previous work, the UCLA group  knew that the glioblastoma cells left behind after radiation were  in a more stem cell-like state. So they irradiated glioblastoma  cells, and then added a cAMP analog.

Which is just a molecule very similar to cAMP. And it worked! The previously cancerous  cells treated with radiation followed by the cAMP analog  looked a lot like neurons.

They had that characteristic spindly shape and they were creating proteins  normally only found in neurons. They seemed like they were once again  law-abiding citizens of Braintopia. But we don’t quite have the data to say  they were just like their former selves.

And even if we did, there’s a bigger problem: this cAMP analog has a pretty short half-life. Basically, it would get broken down before much of it could even reach the glioblastoma. To get around this problem, the  research team tried boosting an enzyme that makes cAMP instead.

After all, the outcome should  be the same: more cAMP. And we already have a tried  and true way of doing that. It’s a molecule with a longer half life than cAMP.

And it can cross the blood-brain barrier. It’s called forskolin. When the same research team irradiated  cells and added forskolin to the mix, it had pretty much the same effect as  treating with radiation plus the cAMP analog: neuron-like shapes and proteins.

Plus they were no longer  dividing like they had been! Which brought us even closer to turning  glioblastomas into regular brain cells. They definitely were not growing tumors anymore.

So it was time to take these  lessons out of the controlled environment of a dish and  into real living animals. When they tested out this new  radiation/forskolin combo treatment on mice with glioblastoma, it increased  the average mouse’s survival from 36 days to 129 days! That’s more than three times longer!

Which meant they had enough  evidence behind them to see how this treatment would work  with human cells inside a body. So the researchers implanted human  glioblastoma cells into mouse brains. Just inching closer to seeing how this would work for people diagnosed with glioblastoma.

In these mice, the combo treatment  reduced their glioblastoma cell count. And the ones left over were going  back to their pre-cancer ways. But unfortunately, the incredible  mouse glioblastoma results didn’t go quite as far for human glioblastoma.

The average survival only increased  a little, from 34 to 48 days. So it kind of works at this stage, but  there’s still plenty to be sorted out. Maybe a higher dose of  forskolin would do the trick.

Or maybe cAMP isn’t enough on its own to properly differentiate stem cells into neurons. After all, when your brain is  developing, cAMP works alongside a bunch of other small signaling proteins. So we might need an even  combo-y-er combo treatment.

Where the research stands right now, we have an awesome new treatment  for mice with glioblastoma. It does the unthinkable and  trades your least favorite cells for pretty close to the  best possible alternatives. But we’re still a few steps away from  seeing that happen in your body or mine.

Which gives us some time to figure out what we would do with the extra brain power. [♪ OUTRO]