Taking aim at one of cancer’s deadliest tricks

Most brain cancers don’t begin in the brain – more than 70 percent start in other parts of the body,  says University of Auckland’s Dr Akshata Anchan.

About 90 percent of melanomas will eventually spread and become brain cancers, says Anchan, who works across the University’s Department of Cancer Sciences and Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology.

“Brain cancer has tragically low survival rates, with only 10 to 30 percent of patients making it to five years after being diagnosed,” she says.

These grim statistics fuel Anchan’s search for ways to stop cancers breaking through the brain’s defences.

When cancer cells spread into the bloodstream, they can travel to any part of the body, she says.

Melanomas and cancers of the lung and breast pose the greatest risk of spreading into the brain, so they are the main focus of Anchan’s research.

She is studying the tricks cancer cells use to gatecrash defences that would normally stop bacteria and viruses from entering the brain.

“Cancers seem to have mechanisms, like secret weapons, that they use to break down the barriers and enter blood vessels in the brain.

“We want to figure out what those secret weapons are, so we can find ways to destroy them or use drugs to block them.”

Anchan is also looking for markers that signal which cancers are most likely to spread to the brain.

In 2023, her team made a groundbreaking discovery that cancer cells make byproducts called large vesicular bodies. These appear to carry harmful material that breaks down the brain’s protective shield.

Anchan hopes that one day, a simple blood test might be able to detect when patients have high levels of these cancer byproducts, signalling a higher risk of brain cancer.

“If we can identify which patients have cancers that look likely to invade the brain, doctors could then offer stronger treatments before it’s too late.”

In the laboratory, Anchan is growing barrier-forming brain cells in petri dishes, adding samples of patient-derived melanoma cells, and observing how the cancer cells breach the brain cells’ barriers.

Electrical pulses are used to test how well the brain-cell barrier resists attacks by cancer cells, with scientists measuring how much current flows through it at different stages.  

The University has granted $60,000 from a donation by the Li Liangren Family Trust to Anchan, who now hopes to add the dynamics of blood flow to her static, lab-dish experiments.

With University of Auckland scientists Dr James Hucklesby and Dr Catherine Angel, Anchan hopes to invent a world-first system that mimics the way cancer cells in the bloodstream flow past brain cells.

“We’re developing some cool new technology that will show more realistically how cancer migrates from the bloodstream into the brain,” she says.

At the age of 10, Anchan moved to New Zealand from India, and in 2017,  she began studying melanoma for her PhD at the University of Auckland.

The 31-year-old has won a string of prestigious awards that have helped launch her research career. Her work on preventing cancers from spreading to the brain has been supported by fellowships from the Neurological Foundation, the Royal Society of New Zealand – Te Apārangi, and the Cancer Research Trust of New Zealand.

“When it’s on the skin, melanoma is fairly easy to treat, whereas treating brain cancers is terribly difficult,” she says.

“So we want to find ways to stop skin cancers from turning into deadly brain cancers.”