New drugs for brain tumors? Insights from chemical probing of neural stem cells

SummaryThe cancer stem cell hypothesis posits a direct relationship between normal neural stem cells (NSCs) and brain tumour stem cells (BTSCs). New insights into human brain tumour biology and treatment should thus emerge from the study of normal NSCs. These parallels have recently been exploited in a chemical genetic screen that identified a broad repertoire of neurotransmission modulators as inhibitors of both NSC and BTSC expansion in vitro. Prompted by these findings, we sought epidemiological support for effects of neuromodulation of brain tumours in vivo. We present observations from data collected from retrospective clinical studies suggesting that patients with a wide variety of neuropsychiatric disorders have decreased brain tumour incidence. We speculate that this reduction may derive from the use of drugs that collaterally affect the normal neural precursor compartment, and thereby limit a population that is suspected to give rise to brain tumours. Standard chronic neuropharmacological interventions in clinical neuropsychiatric care are thus candidates for redeployment as brain cancer therapeutics.