Glioblastoma surgery fails for reasons that have nothing to do with skill. The tumor sends cells into surrounding brain tissue, and surgeons cannot remove what they cannot see without damaging healthy tissue they must protect. Those leftover cells are what cause the cancer to come back.
A research team has built a material designed to attack both halves of that problem. In mouse models, it made tumor cell clusters as small as 44 micrometers visible during surgery, then reactivated inside the surgical cavity and destroyed microscopic cancer the operation could not reach.
