Health & Medicine, Canada (Commonwealth Union) – Glioblastoma is a highly aggressive and lethal form of brain cancer that is known for its rapid progression and poor prognosis. It is a type of astrocytoma, a cancer that develops from the cells that make up the supportive tissue of the brain, called astrocytes. Glioblastoma is also known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) due to the diverse and heterogeneous nature of the tumor.

The symptoms of GBM depend on the location of the tumor in the brain. Some common symptoms include headaches, nausea, vomiting, seizures, memory loss, and changes in vision or speech. These symptoms may worsen over time as the tumor grows and compresses surrounding brain tissue.

Scientists from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) together with the University of Toronto (U of T) Robotics Institute, which is an institutional strategic initiative have collaborated to produce a new treatment option for patients with a GBM diagnosis.

Yu Sun, a professor of the U of T, department of mechanical and industrial engineering from the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, together with Xi Huang, a senior researcher at SickKids who also serves as an associate professor in the department of molecular genetics from the Temerty Faculty of Medicine are the researchers who partnered for the study.  They have the ambition to alter the dire statistic assisted by magnetically guided robotic nano-scalpels that are capable of accurately targeting cancer cells and terminating the cells. The results from their work recently appeared in Science Advances.