Inhibiting ADAM10 could help treat brain cancer

In a paper published in Nature, researchers at Stanford University and colleagues showed that glioma growth is dependent on neuroligin 3 (NLGN3), and that inhibiting ADAM metallopeptidase domain 10 (ADAM10) reduced NLGN3 shedding from neurons and precursor cells, suggesting that targeting ADAM10 could help treat brain cancer.

In patient-derived xenograft mouse models of three glioma types, knockout of NLGN3 slowed glioma growth compared with normal NLGN3 expression. In the knockout mice, tumor growth stopped for up to 6 months, whereas cancer cells from the same patients began growing immediately after transplantation into control mice...