Neurosurgeon at UW-Madison Worries Federal Cuts May Effect Research Into Glioblastoma Vaccine

Friday, June 20th, 2025 -- 8:01 AM

(Anna Marie Yanny, Wisconsin Public Radio) Neurosurgeon and professor Mahua Dey is concerned her team’s effort to develop a glioblastoma vaccine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison could stall as sweeping actions by the current administration to curb federal health funding trickle down to individual labs.

According to Anna Marie Yanny with the Wisconsin Public Radio, the goal of her research is to develop a personalized vaccine that could train glioblastoma patients’ immune systems to prevent their cancer from recurring.

Glioblastoma is a deadly form of brain cancer. For most, the disease is fatal in less than two years. “As a neurosurgeon, I treat patients with glioblastoma,” said Dey, an associate professor of neurosurgery and the director of the surgical neuro-oncology program at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

“The first treatment is surgery, followed by radiation, followed by chemotherapy. And that works for a certain amount of time, in pretty much everybody. However, after that, the cancer comes back.”

Dey’s lab hopes to change that. They’ve helped develop a potential treatment using immune-boosting proteins to modify tumor cells and train the immune system to target the cancer and prevent it from recurring.

The researchers have studied the technique in mice, and next hope to advance their vaccine treatment to human trials. “In mice, it completely cures the cancer. And not only cures it, it develops a memory,” Dey said.

Meaning, the mouse’s revamped immune system continues to clear new tumors. The next step involves completing an “Investigational New Drug” application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dey said.

Then, if the new therapy is approved, it can advance to a phase I clinical trial to test the vaccine safety in humans. But she worries federal cuts could delay the process. In recent months, the current administration has moved to cut federal health spending, including in the FDA.

Additionally, an attempt to slash universities’ National Institutes of Health indirect costs to 15 percent could cost UW-Madison about $65 million annually if a federal effort to do so survives the courts. “The only way to advance science is to fund science,” Dey said.

Specifically, she worries layoffs within the FDA could hamstring her new drug application, and slashed indirect funds could jeopardize the university’s ability to provide reliable biohazard waste disposal, electricity, water and support services to her lab.

“If you stall any of that, everything upstream stalls,” Dey said. Dey said the type of vaccine her lab is working on is different from those U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has targeted with changing policies.

COVID-19 and flu vaccines are typically given to healthy people to prevent disease, whereas Dey said their glioblastoma vaccine would be a personalized treatment only given to people with the disease.

“Those are two very different concepts which could be lumped into the word vaccine, but they work in very different ways,” she said.

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