The paper, “Targeting immunosuppressive myeloid cells via implant-mediated slow release of small molecules to prevent glioblastoma recurrence,” is published in Nature Biomedical Engineering and was authored by Yannik Kaiser, MD-candidate, and Ralph Weissleder, MD, Ph.D., of the Center for Systems Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

The researchers investigated myeloid cells. They make up a large fraction of the tumor microenvironment, are typically immunosuppressive, and help cancer cells grow more freely.

The team asked whether it is possible to prevent glioblastoma from coming back after surgery by reprogramming these immune cells, through targeted delivery of drugs to specific sites in the brain. They wanted to see if this could help transform the tumor microenvironment to fight cancer, rather than support it.