Fifteen researchers from around the world have come to work at Sandrine Etienne-Manneville’s laboratory at the Institut Pasteur. Their brief is to study astrocytes, star-shaped brain cells that support neurons. These cells can become cancerous, causing severe brain tumors known as gliomas, which are the primary cause of childhood cancer mortality ahead of leukemia, with 3,000 new cases diagnosed in France every year. New approaches for tackling these extremely severe tumors could emerge from research carried out by the Cell Polarity, Migration and Cancer Unit.