FOR people with malignant brain tumours, the prospects are often bleak. The
tumours resist drugs and radiotherapy, and are difficult to remove surgically
because they tend to be widely spread. But help could one day come from neural
stem cells—primitive cells that can develop into other types of brain
cells.
Gaetano Finocchiaro and his colleagues at the Carlo Besta National
Neurological Institute in Milan knew from earlier studies that neural stem cells
can spread throughout the brain once they have been injected into it. So they
decided to test whether these cells could be used to transport anticancer agents…
