New Research Challenges Current Thinking on How Brain Cancer Develops

South Korean scientists have published the results of a study that provides vital insights indicating that brain cancer develops much earlier than the time when tumors become visible. Their findings could alter how brain cancer treatment is approached, especially efforts geared at limiting the possibility of its recurrence.

The study focused on IDH-mutant glioma, a type of brain cancer that is most common among brain cancer patients who haven’t reached the age of 50. This cancer is difficult to treat due to its high likelihood of regrowth after a patient has undergone therapy.

Current treatment approaches focus on the surgical excision of the visible tumors, but this study shows that such an approach needs to be modified since the disease develops much earlier, long before tumors become visible. The researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) used advanced genomic mapping to study the brain cells of patients with IDH-mutant glioma.

Their analysis showed that this malignancy’s origin is traceable to GPCs, or Glial Progenitor Cells, found in healthy tissues of the brain. They found that once these cells acquire a mutation on the IDH gene, the mutation often spreads throughout the cerebral cortex a long time before tumor masses start to form.

To test their findings, they introduced this mutation into the GPCs of mice and observed that the mutation spread within the cerebral cortex long before tumors started forming. The team was able to identify the key steps through which the development of this cancer occurs, and their findings have significant implications on how brain cancer could be better treated.

Previously, it was thought that tumors develop in or around the area where a cancer first develops, and thus, treatment tended to be focused on the area where the cancer is visible during surgery. This latest research shows that the origins of malignancies in the brain are often far from the area where the tumor forms, and this calls for tweaking treatment approaches in order to increase the odds of preventing recurrence.

The study also found that different subtypes of brain cancer have different origins. Doctor Jung W. Park, the first author of the study, explains that understanding where a particular tumor type originates can provide insights into how best to approach treatment so that the problem is addressed from its source rather than focusing on just where it is manifesting.

Understanding the origin also makes it easier to develop techniques and tools for early diagnosis so that timely intervention increases chances of successful treatment while also lowering costs and preserving as much of the brain as possible during surgical procedures to remove tumor masses.

The fight against primary brain cancers is attaining many successes on the research front, and it is just a matter of time before entities like CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) focused on developing therapies for brain cancers commercialize novel treatments that change the paradigm of cancer care.

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