Glioblastoma is among the most aggressive and devastating of cancers. While rare compared with other cancers, it’s the most common type of brain cancer. Even with intensive therapy, relatively few patients survive longer than two years after diagnosis, and fewer than 10% of patients survive beyond five years. Despite extensive studies focused on genomic features of glioblastoma, relatively little progress has been made in improving treatment for patients with this deadly disease.
Now, a new study led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Case Western Reserve University and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has revealed a detailed map of the genes, proteins, infiltrating cells and signaling pathways that play key roles in driving glioblastoma. The study, of 99 tumors from patients, is the largest and most detailed schematic of this deadly brain tumor.
The research is part of the NCI’s Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC).
“To improve therapies for this deadly cancer, understanding the tumor cells themselves is important but not enough,” said senior author Li Ding, PhD, a professor of medicine and of genetics and director of computational biology in the Division of Oncology at Washington University. “We also must understand the tumor cells’ interactions with the surrounding environment, including immune cells and the connective tissues and blood vessels. In our study, we performed high-resolution and high-depth analyses on 99 glioblastoma tumors. Harnessing new technologies, including proteomics, metabolomics and single cell sequencing, this study is an extremely deep dive into glioblastoma tumor biology, revealing new possibilities for therapy.”
