{"id":221260,"date":"2025-09-01T12:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T17:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/how-pediatric-brain-tumors-grow-blocking-a-chemical-messenger-could-offer-new-route-to-treatment"},"modified":"2025-09-01T12:03:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T17:03:00","slug":"how-pediatric-brain-tumors-grow-blocking-a-chemical-messenger-could-offer-new-route-to-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/how-pediatric-brain-tumors-grow-blocking-a-chemical-messenger-could-offer-new-route-to-treatment","title":{"rendered":"How pediatric brain tumors grow: Blocking a chemical messenger could offer new route to treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-pediatric-brain-tumors-grow-blocking-a-chemical-messenger-could-offer-new-route-to-treatment.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The most common type of brain tumor in children, pilocytic astrocytoma (PA), accounts for about 15% of all pediatric brain tumors. Although this type of tumor is usually not life-threatening, the unchecked growth of tumor cells can disrupt normal brain development and function.<\/p>\n<p>Current treatments focus mainly on removing the tumor cells, but recent studies have shown that non-cancerous cells, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/nerve+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">nerve cells<\/a>, also play a role in brain tumor formation and growth, suggesting novel approaches to treating these cancers.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have long known that a nerve cell signaling chemical called <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/glutamate\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">glutamate<\/a> can increase the growth of cancers throughout the body, but despite years of investigation, they haven\u2019t figured out exactly how this happens, or how to stop it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most common type of brain tumor in children, pilocytic astrocytoma (PA), accounts for about 15% of all pediatric brain tumors. Although this type of tumor is usually not life-threatening, the unchecked growth of tumor cells can disrupt normal brain development and function. Current treatments focus mainly on removing the tumor cells, but recent studies [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}