Turkish Nobel laureate mice 250 days

Aziz Sancar’s glioblastoma result is real, but it is narrower than the social-media version makes it sound. On January 2, UNC Health said Sancar and colleagues reported that combining temozolomide, the standard chemotherapy for glioblastoma, with 5-ethynyl-2′-deoxyuridine, or EdU, produced “unprecedented survival and cancer remission” in preclinical models. (news.unchealthcare.org) UNC said that in one mouse model, the combined regimen led to complete cancer reduction by day 23 and that every mouse lived to the end of the study, beyond 250 days. Aziz Sancar is the Turkish-born University of North Carolina scientist who shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on DNA repair. (pnas.org) That background matters here because the new glioblastoma work is built around damaging tumor DNA in a way the cancer cells cannot successfully repair. ### Who is the Nobel laureate in the post? Aziz Sancar, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the researcher behind the work. NobelPrize.org says Sancar shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Tomas Lindahl and Paul Modrich “for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.” UNC identified Sancar as the lead figure in the January 2 announcement and said the work involved researchers at the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. (news.unchealthcare.org) The paper was contributed by Sancar and lists Humeyra Kaanoglu as first author. ### What exactly did the mouse study show? (nobelprize.org) UNC said the team tested the combination in three glioblastoma cell lines — U87, GBM8 and LN229 — and in several preclinical settings, including orthotopic xenograft mouse models. In the U87 mouse model, UNC said 200 mg/kg of EdU plus 5 mg/kg of temozolomide produced complete cancer reduction by day 23, and every mouse survived to the study endpoint beyond 250 days. (nobelprize.org) The underlying paper describes the result as preclinical, not clinical. The bioRxiv version says the combination improved antitumor efficacy versus either drug alone in vitro, in three orthotopic glioblastoma xenograft models, and in patient tumor tissue engrafted in an organotypic brain-slice platform. (news.unchealthcare.org) ### Was this only a social-media claim? No. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a paper on the work in early 2026, and a bioRxiv preprint carrying the same title was posted in October 2025. The preprint says it had not been peer reviewed at that stage, while the PNAS version shows the paper was received on November 11, 2025, and accepted on December 1, 2025. (news.unchealthcare.org) The social post left out details that matter. The public summaries available through UNC and Medical Xpress describe the dosing, the model and the survival endpoint, but they do not, in the snippets surfaced here, disclose the mouse sample size for the headline result. (biorxiv.org) ### Why combine EdU with temozolomide? Temozolomide is already part of standard treatment for adult glioblastoma. The National Cancer Institute says it is approved for newly diagnosed glioblastoma and used with radiation therapy, then alone as maintenance therapy. UNC said Sancar’s group had previously shown that EdU could enter brain tissue and kill tumor cells while sparing healthy brain tissue in patient-derived glioblastoma samples. (biorxiv.org) The new study then tested whether adding EdU to temozolomide could improve on temozolomide alone. ### Does this mean a cure for human glioblastoma is near? (news.unchealthcare.org) The January 2 report does not say that. UNC and the paper both describe the findings as preclinical, meaning they were generated in cell systems, mouse models and patient-derived tissue platforms rather than in human patients. (cancer.gov) The next concrete step would be formal human testing. NCI’s glioblastoma trials page shows that moving from a mouse result to patient treatment requires clinical trials designed to test safety, dosing and efficacy in people. (cancer.gov) (news.unchealthcare.org)