Welcome to our Monthly Journal Club! Each month I post a paper or two that I have read and find interesting. I use this as a forum for open discussion about the paper in question. Anyone can participate in the journal club, and provide comments/critiques on the paper by leaving a comment below. I picked this month’s paper because it describes a scary phenomenon (brain tumors interlocking with neural circuits!) that could have far-reaching consequences for how we treat brain cancer. This paper, in combination with two others in the same issue, will become classics in the new field of ‘cancer neuroscience’. The paper we are discussing is titled “Electrical and synaptic integration of glioma into neural circuits” (click the hyperlink to see the paper) by Michelle Monje & colleagues at Stanford University. Two other great papers outlining integration of cancer and neural circuits can be found at these links:

“Synaptic proximity enables NMDAR signalling to promote brain metastasis”

“Glutamatergic synaptic input to glioma cells drives brain tumour progression”

Together, these studies provide evidence that cancer cells synaptically communicate with neurons in the brain, and this communication boosts tumor growth! (see the figure below)