thiruvananthapuram in a pathbreaking finding that could bring in a fundamental change in the treatment of cancerous brain tumours a team of scientists from the san francisco medical centre university of california discovered that the cancerous cells link up with healthy brain cells to become hyperactive and cause speedy cognitive loss and death in patientsthe team led by saritha krishna an indian also found out that a commonly used antiseizure drug was effective in reducing the hyperactivity of the tumour cells and even halting their growththe study was published in the latest issue of the science journal naturescientists have found out that the communication between healthy brain cells and cancerous cells could be manipulated to slow down or even halt the growth of the tumourthese findings will be more beneficial to patients with glioblastoma considered the most fatal among adult brain cancers the study notedthe study conducted by krishna and fellow scientist shawn herveyjumper discovered a previously unknown mechanism by which brain tumours hijack and modify brain circuitry to cause a decline in cognitive activities in glioma patients while recording the brain activity in patients undergoing awakebrain tumour surgerytalking to pti krishna a native of thiruvananthapuram kerala and the lead author of the paper said when patients were given language tasks during awake brain surgery in addition to the commonly known language areas of the brain we found activation in tumourinfiltrated brain regions which were remote and farther away from the language brain zonesthis unexpected finding showed that the deadly cancer cells can hijack and restructure connections in surrounding brain tissue to make them hyperactive speeding up cognitive decline and shortening the survival period among patientsthis forced the scientists to carry out extensive biological characterisation of the connected tumour cells using brain organoids small bundles of neurons derived from human stem cells and mouse models engrafted with human glioblastoma cellsthese experiments revealed a key role of a protein called thrombospondin1 in this neuronal hyperexcitability and that the drug gabapentin a commonly used antiseizure medication successfully reduced neuronal hyperexcitability and halted further tumour growth the study quotedthis discovery could be greatly beneficial in developing more effective treatment methods for a very fatal disease like glioblastoma the scientists notedbesides this known antiseizure activity this study discovering the antitumour effect of gabapentin using mouse models highlights the potential of repurposing this existing drug to target tumour growth thereby expediting therapeutic drug development for patients with malignant glioma saritha saidmoreover the key discovery regarding the hijacking of brain circuitry by the cancer cell will lead to the development of drugs and neuromodulation techniques that could disconnect neuronal linkups with brain cancer cells to halt tumour growth she addednoninvasive brain modulation techniques traditionally applied to modulate neuronal function in epilepsy and psychiatric diseases could now be exploited in clinical trials and tested in patients with brain cancer to suppress gliomas activity saritha said