News Humans

Brain cancer can dissolve parts of the skull

Scans of mice and patients detail a new way the notorious disease can attack 

An illustration over an X-ray image shows a human head and neck from the side, with red and blue lines indicating the presence of glioblastoma in a person

A type of brain cancer called glioblastoma, shown in this illustration, can thin the bones of the skull in mice and people.

Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

By Meghan Rosen

It sounds like something from a horror movie: A disease that eats through bone, dissolving the fused plates of the skull like bubbling acid.