Brain health research highlights powerful protein’s role in stem cells and tumour growth

Hema Priya Mahendran, Lisa Porter, Ingrid Qemo, Dorota Lubanska and Bre-Anne Fifield are a few of the authors on a new paper

published in the journal Stem Cell Reports. (ANGELA KHARBOUTLI/University of Windsor)

The key to designing future brain cancer therapies could lie with a mighty protein called Spy1, which is found in neural stem cells in the adult brain. 

Neural stem cells play a critical role in memory, learning and brain repair. 

Since these cells decline as we age, Spy1 becomes important because, at certain levels, it can help “wake up”, or turn on, these stem cells in a process called neurogenesis. 

But new research suggests that too much of a good thing can be harmful. 

“We know that elevated levels of Spy1 are found in aggressive human brain cancers, including glioblastoma,” says principal investigator Dr. Lisa Porter. 

“We wanted to understand what this protein does in normal adult brain stem cells before cancer develops.” 

Porter’s research team designed a mouse model to genetically increase levels of Spy1 specifically in adult neural stem cells. 

They found that while Spy1 activated these cells, excessive levels pushed them to divide too much, leaving them more susceptible to becoming tumours. 

“We designed a mouse model to mimic what happens in cancer because we know Spy1 levels are elevated in certain brain cancers,” says Porter. 

“We found that pushing this system out of balance made the cells more susceptible to different types of cancer and also affected learning and memory.” 

Biomedical science research associate Dr. Dorota Lubanska and Dr. Ingrid Qemo, a UWindsor graduate and member of the Porter Lab, were first authors on the paper. 

Biomedical science research associate Dr. Dorota Lubanska and Dr. Ingrid Qemo, a UWindsor graduate and member of the Porter Lab,

were first authors on the paper. (ANGELA KHARBOUTLI/University of Windsor)

Lubanska says the findings raise important new questions. 

“Adult neural stem cells are one of the brain’s few sources of regeneration, but their activity must be carefully controlled,” says Lubanska. “Understanding how this regulation works has important implications for brain cancer, brain health and advances in medicine.” 

Ultimately, Lubanska says the data further confirm that Spy1 is an important protein to target. 

“The next step is figuring out how to selectively target it and determine which brain tumours would best respond to this approach,” she says. 

A better understanding of the cell cycle is also critical, says Lubanska, because when the cycle goes quiet, some potentially cancerous cells can evade therapy and later begin growing again. 

“One of the biggest challenges with glioblastoma is tumour recurrence,” says Lubanska. 

“Even after what appears to be successful treatment, some cells can evade therapy, re-enter the cell cycle and begin growing again, leading to relapse.” 

Another important result, she says, was confirming how neural stem cells deplete as mice age. 

“Normally, neural stem cell populations decline with age, but when Spy1 was overexpressed, those populations were maintained much longer,” says Lubanska. 

“That finding helped us understand how the protein controls stem cell expansion over time.” 

Porter adds that expanding these stem cell populations did not improve brain function as expected. 

“We thought increasing these cells might improve learning and memory,” she says. “Instead, it came at the expense of other brain cells, so the mice actually showed learning deficits.” 

Porter says the finding may also open the door to future research exploring links between aging, neural stem cell regulation and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. 

The team’s work was recently published in the journal Stem Cell Reports in an article titled “Atypical cell cycle regulation over neural stem cell expansion.” 

The project was years in the making and involved many researchers from Porter’s lab. 

“This study took a very long time to finalize and spanned many graduate students, undergraduate students and research associates,” says Lubanska. “It required time and precision.” 

The project was initially funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant and later supported by a WESPARK Health Institute Igniting Discovery grant. 

By Sara Elliott

Courtesy:  https://www.uwindsor.ca/news/2026-01-12/brain-health-research-highlights-powerful-protein%E2%80%99s-role-stem-cells-and-tumour-growth