A new paper suggests that people with a history of stroke or traumatic brain injury are at increased risk of developing brain tumors. It's still only epidemiology and mouse studies, though. Without a plausible biological mechanism, the work remains EXPLORATORY.
The study focused on one type of brain injury, stroke, and a specific brain tumor, glioma, because it is the most prevalent and aggressive malignant brain tumor in adults with a 5-year survival rate. They found that the relative risk can be about three-fold to seven-fold, depending on the age and sex of the patient, but risk in a bubble without context isn't going to be enough to cause alarm.
They noted the emergence of tumor-associated astrocytes - brain cells - with clear physiological characteristics such as diminished calcium activity, which they linked to the accumulation of two other cell types, remodeled tumor-associated microglia and immune cells called macrophages.
In mice, restoring tumor-associated astrocytes calcium signaling or removing tumor-associated microglia suppressed stroke-induced glioma progression, which were deemed mediators of the stroke response. Neuron-tumor interactions have been linked to cancer growth and the authors argue that astrocytes may also interact with brain cancer cells and influence outcomes.
If this ever transposes to humans, it could mean those injury-induced, tumor-promoting pathways are new therapeutic targets and mitigate some of the risk of glioma growth in people with brain injuries.
“We show that stroke promoted tumor infiltration into injured brain regions in human and mouse glioma models, and reduced overall survival,” said corresponding author Dr. Hyun Kyoung Lee, associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor. “Looking closer into the cellular and molecular makeup of the tumors, we found that stroke triggers remodeling of the tumor microenvironment.”
Citation: Qi Ye, Christine Madamba, Junsung Woo, Tiffany J. Choy, Kate F. Wheeler, Jiangshan Zhan, Carlo D. Cristobal, Catalina Spjut, Donghui Shin, Juyeon Jo, Roshan R. Ailani, Joshua Smith, Khatri Latha, Akdes Serin Harmanci, Hari Krishna Yalamanchili, Marco Gallo, Kyuson Yun, Yana K. Reshetnyak, Eunhee Kim, Yongsoo Kim, Ganesh Rao, Benjamin Deneen & Hyun Kyoung Lee, 'Stroke drives glioma progression through the emergence of tumor-associated astrocytes with reduced Ca2+ activity'. Nat Cancer (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s43018-026-01238-8
