Nasal Drops Fight Deadly Brain Cancer Noninvasively
- Nov 25, 2025
- 2 min read
Researchers have developed an innovative treatment for glioblastoma, the most common malignant brain cancer and one of the deadliest forms of the disease. Preliminary test results show that a medicine delivered through nasal drops successfully reached the central nervous system to fight these usually fatal tumors in mice. Glioblastoma is notoriously aggressive, hard to detect early, and currently has no curative treatments, largely because delivering medicine to the brain is extremely challenging. Only 6.9 percent of patients typically survive beyond five years after diagnosis.
The new approach, developed by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and collaborators at Northwestern University, utilizes nanotechnology. The treatment involves precisely engineered nanostructures called spherical nucleic acids (SNAs). These SNAs are built from genetic material wrapped around a gold nanoparticle core, which helps maintain their stability for longer periods in the body.
The goal of the therapy is to overcome the invasive nature of existing experimental treatments. Past attempts to treat glioblastoma focused on stimulating the STING pathway (stimulator of interferon genes), which alerts the immune system to threats like foreign DNA. However, those STING-activating drugs break down rapidly, requiring multiple, highly invasive intratumoral administrations to reach the deeply situated tumors.
Akanksha Mahajan, PhD, a neuroscientist at Washington University, explained that the team wanted to minimize the invasive procedures required for ill patients and used the SNA platforms for noninvasive drug delivery.
When administered as drops in the nose, the nanomedicine travels along the path of the main nerve connecting facial muscles to the brain. This delivery method successfully activated the STING pathway within specific immune cells in the tumor, arming the immune system to fight the cancer.
When the nasal nanodrops were combined with other drugs designed to boost immunity by activating T lymphocytes, the therapy was highly effective. This combination successfully eliminated tumors and induced long-term immunity against recurrence in the mice, yielding results significantly better than current STING-targeting therapies.
Dr. Alexander Stegh, a neurosurgeon from Washington University, emphasized the importance of this development. He stated that this approach “offers hope for safer, more effective treatments for glioblastoma and potentially other immune treatment-resistant cancers” and marks a critical step toward clinical application. Stegh, whose grandmother battled metastatic brain tumors, noted that this research redefines how cancer immunotherapy can be achieved in otherwise difficult-to-access tumors.
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Keywords: Brain Cancer
Brain Cancer
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