Posted: 26 November 2025
A new investigation from Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre is reported to have uncovered how cells forming the brain’s protective barrier act as “gatekeepers”, influencing how some brain tumours responded when nutrients were limited.
Lead researcher Professor Louise Cheng was quoted emphasising the central role of surrounding glial cells. “We found that the surrounding glial cells act like gatekeepers,” she said. “They influence how many nutrients reach the tumour, and this directly affects how the cancer behaves under nutrient-poor conditions.”
Published in PLoS Biology, the research demonstrated that cancer cells rely on a steady supply of sugars, amino acids and fats to sustain their rapid growth. Because tumours consume these nutrients at far higher rates than normal tissue, they become susceptible when nutrients are scarce. The study showed that the blood–brain barrier — a layer of glial cells regulating nutrient flow — controlled how tumours adapted to this scarcity.
A key discovery centred on Path, a transporter protein responsible for bringing certain amino acids into the brain. Healthy glial cells were found to increase Path levels when nutrients were restricted, compensating for reduced supply. By contrast, tumour-affected glial cells reduced Path levels under the same conditions.
Professor Cheng explained that this shift slowed cancer cell growth by disrupting the glial environment around the tumour, limiting its ability to continue dividing. “This tells us that Path is a critical switch,” she said. “Its levels at the blood–brain barrier determine how sensitive a tumour is to changes in nutrient availability.”
The study was completed in collaboration with researchers Fumiaki Obata and Hina Kosakamoto at RIKEN Kobe in Japan, and Cyrille Alexandre at the Francis Crick Institute in the UK. The work was supported by JSPS promotion of science travel funding, enabling lab exchanges and collaboration between the Obata and Cheng groups.
