On Feb. 22, Professor Sung-Kee Jung of the Department of Chemistry announced that his research team developed a treatment for brain tumors using Paclitaxel, an anti-cancer medicine.

Currently, brain tumor patients usually have to undergo operations or have radiotherapy as part of their treatment. This is because the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB), which protects the brain from bacterial infections, keeps drugs from entering target tumors. Since antibodies are too large to cross the BBB, brain tumors are difficult to treat by medicine.

Accordingly, although Paclitaxel, which annihilates cancer cells by protecting depolimerization of tubulin during cell division, is effective to ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and lung cancer, it was not able to be used for brain tumors.

The research team succeeded in synthesizing the drug delivery-vector made of sorbitol, and through animal testing, Prof. Jung demonstrated that the sorbitol-based drug delivery-vector is effective with brain tumors. The discovery was posted on the online edition of MedChemComm on Feb.11.

“This research holds significance in that it now becomes possible to use medicine to treat brain tumors,” said Prof. Jung. He added, “I hope that these research results invigorate the development of brain disease cures, especially for Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases.”