New McMaster-made drug candidate shows promise as a brain cancer treatment
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New McMaster-made drug candidate shows promise as a brain cancer treatment

13/05/2026 McMaster University

A next-generation cancer therapy being developed at McMaster University has shown early promise as a treatment candidate for glioblastoma, the most aggressive and most common type of primary brain cancer in adults.

In preclinical research, published today in Science Translational Medicine, scientists showed that the newly developed drug candidate can eliminate deadly glioblastoma tumours, which typically resist standard treatments and often recur rapidly, even after surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

Researchers say the findings could mark an important advance against the disease, which has a median survival rate of less than 15 months from diagnosis.

“New therapies for glioblastoma are urgently needed,” says Sheila Singh, a professor in McMaster’s Department of Surgery and principal investigator on the new study. “The standard of glioblastoma care has remained largely unchanged for over two decades, and the disease remains uniformly fatal because of it.”

The new drug candidate, called a uPAR Chimeric CAR T cell, is an early-stage immunotherapy that was developed using antibodies created in partnership with scientists at Canada’s National Research Council in Ottawa.

The novel cell therapy reprograms the body’s own immune system to recognize and attack a specific protein found on the surface of glioblastoma cells, called the urokinase receptor — or uPAR. This protein is also found on nearby support cells that fuel tumour growth, allowing the new therapy to not only eliminate deadly cancer cells, but also to dismantle the biological infrastructure that allows glioblastoma to persist and recur after treatment.

Singh says that this work is part of a broader shift in cancer research, noting that scientists at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Columbia University have also recently converged upon uPAR as a promising drug target in lung and pancreatic cancers. She says that this broader focus on uPAR is driving new collaborative efforts aimed at developing therapies that could potentially work across multiple hard-to-treat cancers.

In the meantime, Singh, whose work is based out of McMaster’s Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research and is supported by NexusHealth, says that discussions about moving her lab’s recent discovery toward clinical trials are already underway.

“This is a very exciting clinical candidate,” says Singh, who is also a professor of neuro-oncology and neurosurgery at King’s College London in the United Kingdom. “Our goal is to continue pushing this research forward, so that we can translate these preclinical results into first-in-human studies.”

For William Maich, a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster and first author on the new study, the prospect of translating some of his own science into a tangible treatment that can improve quality of care is deeply motivating, especially in a field where meaningful clinical advances have been rare for decades.

“It would be a dream come true for me to have some of my work help glioblastoma patients,” says Maich, who works in Singh’s lab. “Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know patients and their families through our bequeathal program at McMaster, and being able to finally present them with an alternative to the current standard of care would be a great honour.”

Singh’s group has patented the new therapy and is now exploring potential commercial and clinical pathways for the drug.

doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aea8381
William T. Maich https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5491-3452
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Software, Validation, Visualization, and Writing - original draft.

Muhammad Vaseem Shaikh
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Validation, Visualization, and Writing - review & editing.

Anish Puri
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Formal analysis, Investigation, and Methodology.

Martin A. Rossotti https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8902-5532
Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre, Life Sciences Division, National Research Council Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Roles: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, and Writing - review & editing.

Shan Grewal
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Formal analysis and Investigation.

Aapti Khanna https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1774-7357
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Formal analysis, Investigation, Software, Validation, and Visualization.

Alisha Anand
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Investigation and Validation.

Nicholas Mikolajewicz https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7525-0384
Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Program for Genetics and Genome Biology, Hospital for Sick Children, Peter Gilgan Centre for Research & Learning, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Roles: Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Visualization, and Writing - review & editing.

Mathieu P. Seyfrid https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0632-8870
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Conceptualization and Supervision.

Dillon A. McKenna
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Investigation and Resources.

Minomi Subapanditha
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Formal analysis and Resources.

Daniel Mobilio https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4469-6815
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Data curation and Validation.

Greg Hussack https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9852-6865
Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre, Life Sciences Division, National Research Council Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Roles: Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Validation, and Writing - review & editing.

Joey G. Sheff https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9269-6863
Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre, Life Sciences Division, National Research Council Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Roles: Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, and Writing - original draft.

Jennifer J. Hill https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0031-0706
Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre, Life Sciences Division, National Research Council Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Ottawa Institute for Systems Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Roles: Formal analysis, Investigation, and Methodology.

Mo Taleb https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6153-8782
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Investigation and Methodology.

Jacek M. Kwiecien
Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Investigation, Methodology, and Visualization.

Sabra Salim
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Conceptualization and Methodology.

Neil Savage
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Investigation and Validation.

Bill Wang
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Methodology and Writing - review & editing.

Sunjay Sharma
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft, and Writing - review & editing.

Abdelsimar Omar https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2965-8506
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Conceptualization, Resources, and Writing - review & editing.

Chirayu Chokshi https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0831-0217
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Role: Methodology.

Kui Zhai https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4725-190X
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Resources, Writing - original draft, and Writing - review & editing.

Shawn C. Chafe https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8802-651X
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Formal analysis, Project administration, Supervision, and Writing - review & editing.

Jason Moffat https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5663-8586
Program for Genetics and Genome Biology, Hospital for Sick Children, Peter Gilgan Centre for Research & Learning, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Role: Conceptualization.

Thomas Kislinger https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3525-5540
Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Roles: Methodology, Resources, and Writing - review & editing.

Chitra Venugopal
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Roles: Conceptualization, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, and Writing - review & editing.

Kevin A. Henry
Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre, Life Sciences Division, National Research Council Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Roles: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, and Writing - review & editing.

Sheila K. Singh* https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1272-5300 ssingh@mcmaster.ca
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences, Comprehensive Cancer Centre, King’s College London, London, UK.
Roles: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, and Writing - review & editing.

Funding Information
McMaster University
Terry Fox Research Institute
Notes
*
For interviews, contact Singh directly at ssingh@mcmaster.ca
13/05/2026 McMaster University
Regions: North America, Canada, Europe, United Kingdom
Keywords: Health, Medical

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