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The Cancer Research Center of Université Laval organized its 3rd science communication contest in 2025. This text is the work of one of the two winners, Nadine Morin, a PhD student in cellular and molecular biology in Professor Marc-Étienne Huot's laboratory.
After facing a first cancer, we always hope the worst is behind us. However, for people with glioblastoma, a very aggressive brain tumor, it is not uncommon for the disease to return after initial treatment. This return of the disease is what is called a recurrence.
The discoveries made pave the way for medicine capable of intervening more precisely and earlier before a recurrence occurs.
Illustration by Maude Royer
Recently, our research team focused on the ability of the initial tumor to produce a chemical messenger that could be at the origin of the second cancer episode.
Like a large factory, the body functions thanks to a multitude of workers: the cells. They all share the same instructions, the genetic code. In cancers, there are often several anomalies, called mutations, that occur in the genetic code of the cells that make up the tumor. At first, these errors are very small and infrequent, difficult to detect. It is only once these anomalies have accumulated that the first symptoms appear and a cancer diagnosis can be made.
In the case of glioblastomas, this mutation in the genetic code that occurs in the early stages of the disease has the effect of turning the cell's machinery against itself to produce an altered form of a molecule involved in the proper functioning of the cell. This altered form is called 2-hydroxyglutarate (2HG). This modified version of the molecule will trigger a series of reactions that will give tumor cells an advantage, notably by allowing them to divide more rapidly, consume energy more efficiently, and promote cancer progression.
However, the altered form of the molecule does not just act inside the tumor cells. Like a messenger, it also circulates in the immediate environment of the tumor, affecting neighboring cells, blood vessels, and other components of the brain. What happens if this message is picked up by healthy cells outside the tumor? It then acts as a groundskeeper.
By recreating the altered form of the molecule in the laboratory and evaluating its effect on healthy cells outside the tumor, it is possible to compare what distinguishes cells exposed to this messenger from those that are not. By studying these differences, we target the processes that could contribute to recurrence.
We discovered that healthy cells within the reach of the chemical messenger will acquire characteristics allowing them to grow faster and more invasively, while evading the radar of initial treatments. Without becoming cancerous per se, these seemingly healthy cells acquire characteristics of tumor cells and retain an imprint of the effects of the chemical messenger, even after the initial tumor is removed. It is this imprint that serves as the starting blueprint for recurrence.
Understanding how this messenger propagates and what signature it leaves behind allows for a better picture of the recurrence situation. These discoveries pave the way for medicine capable of intervening more precisely and earlier, before lightning strikes again.