The current standard of care for GBM patients involves surgery followed by radiation and/or chemotherapy. While this may be effective at eliminating most of the tumor cells in the short term, the majority of GBM patients will relapse within seven to nine months. These recurrent tumors are highly aggressive and resistant to virtually all available treatments, and the patient will eventually succumb to the disease. There is an urgent need to understand why tumor recurrence occurs so often in GBM patients and improve the current standard of care.

Recent research has found that chemoradiotherapy, in addition to slowing the growth of tumor cells, may also unexpectedly promote tumor recurrence. Chemoradiotherapy causes damage to the DNA of cancer cells, leading to the activation of proteins called tumor suppressors. These tumor suppressors, as the name suggests, will suppress the growth of tumor cells. However, our recent work has uncovered an unconventional role of the so-called “tumor suppressor” protein TP73 in promoting GBM cell growth. In this project, we will investigate how chemoradiotherapy alters TP73 expression and activity and whether TP73 plays a role in promoting tumor recurrence.

This project will allow us to better understand how GBM cells respond to chemoradiotherapy. The knowledge generated from this project will allow us to design better therapeutic strategies to help improve outcomes for GBM patients.