BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

Entrepreneur watch: Iwasaki targets the lymphatic system to clear brain tumors

After starting two companies this year, Yale’s Akiko Iwasaki clears glioblastoma in mice via brain lymphatics

February 14, 2020 10:48 PM UTC
Updated on Feb 16, 2020 at 6:45 AM UTC

Rising serial entrepreneur Akiko Iwasaki aims to bring antitumor immunity to the brain by opening the brain’s lymphatics, a recently discovered system of vessels just starting to find translational uses.

In 2015, a Nature paper from the lab of Jonathan Kipnis at the University of Virginia overturned long-standing dogma about immune privilege when it showed the brain, like every other organ in the body, contains a lymphatic network. ...