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Figure shows glioblastoma cell loss following treatment with NK92 natural killer cells. Glioblastoma cells are green and natural killer cells are pink/red. Headlines 11 “I honestly think big breakthroughs are going to happen in the next five years.” Dr Scott Graham recognised as tumour cells, and the natural killer cells will deal with them. Tight control of natural killer cells is really important, otherwise they would cause more damage to healthy tissue.” In Dr Graham’s experiments, natural killer cells have shown stunning results. “They are the best at killing GBM culture of anything we’ve ever seen – up to 80-90% of GBM cells. Nothing else that’s been published has got this efficacy.” However, if any cells remain the cancer will always return, so the next challenge is to find ways to kill all the cells. “We need to work out how to kill them better, how to kill them completely, and how to make natural killer cells more potent,” says Dr Graham. “We’ve designed a whole set of future experiments to understand more, which is the critical next step.” For now, Dr Graham feels that researchers are making exciting progress. “I think we’re onto something. “With glioblastoma, there have been no large gains in treatment like what we’ve seen with other very aggressive tumours, so any improvement is beneficial. Even if it only benefits 5% of people, it’s still huge. “We desperately need to find something that will work for even a small percentage of these patients to provide some kind of hope, some kind of future for them. “I honestly think big breakthroughs are going to happen in the next five years. “We wouldn’t have been able to do this research if it weren’t for the Neurological Foundation.”