A tumor doesn’t grow alone.
Cancer cells live within a complex neighborhood of immune cells, supportive cells, blood vessels and other structures. Together, they form what scientists call the tumor microenvironment—and that environment can help cancer grow, spread, and resist treatment.
At the Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute, the Rao Lab, led by Manjeet Rao, PhD, is working to understand those relationships—and find ways to disrupt them.
One major focus is medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor in children.
High-risk medulloblastoma remains especially difficult to treat because tumors can return, spread through the central nervous system, and become resistant to therapies such as radiation.
The Rao Lab is investigating how signals exchanged between tumor cells and their surrounding environment help medulloblastoma cells survive. Researchers are studying how cancer cells change their metabolism, maintain stem-like characteristics, escape the immune system, and develop resistance to treatment.
That work is revealing potential weaknesses.
Researchers from the Rao Lab and collaborators have found evidence that medulloblastoma cells depend on a molecule called ALKBH5. In laboratory and preclinical models, reducing ALKBH5 impaired tumor-cell growth and migration, increased cancer-cell death and reduced characteristics associated with medulloblastoma stem cells—cells thought to play an important role in recurrence and treatment resistance. These findings suggest ALKBH5 could represent a potential therapeutic target, although more research is needed before that possibility could translate into treatment for patients.
The lab is also exploring another potential vulnerability involving SKP2, a protein that may help medulloblastoma stem cells meet their energy needs and resist radiation. The research is examining whether disrupting those energy-producing pathways could make tumors more vulnerable to radiation—potentially opening a path toward effective treatment with less radiation exposure.
And the Rao Lab’s approach goes beyond a single target. Its researchers are developing and testing small-molecule drugs, antibody-based treatments, engineered immune cells and combinations designed to attack cancer while reducing harm to healthy tissue.
The goal isn’t simply to understand how childhood brain tumors survive. It’s to use that knowledge against them.
By uncovering the relationships that allow aggressive cancers to grow, hide, and resist treatment, the Rao Lab is searching for vulnerabilities that could lead to more effective—and less toxic—therapies for children.
🔬 Learn more about the Rao Lab
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