It is responsible for more than half of all brain tumors. Tumors associated with glioblastoma multiforme grow particularly fast and easily migrate to neighboring sections of brain tissue. It is the most malignant and also most common among brain cancers. Now, a team of scientists from the First Hospital of the China Medical University in Shenyang (China) has identified eight genes that predict how long a patient will survive after being diagnosed with this cancer . These genes are linked to the immune system and could help doctors determine better treatment in the future.
In this type of cancer, patients rarely survive more than a year from diagnosis, even using surgery, radiation therapy or chemotherapy, the prognosis is always poor because the glioblastoma does not respond well to current treatments. It’s very tough. Due to the location of the tumor in the brain, it is practically impossible to eliminate all the cancerous tissue, making relapse inevitable.
For the study, the researchers examined tissue samples from 297 people with brain tumors, 127 of them with glioblastoma and the rest with less aggressive forms of glioma, and analyzed 322 genes involved in the immune system. This careful examination resulted in a total of 8 genes associated with key roles in glioblastoma multiforme. Three of these genes were shown to have a protective role, while the other five increased the risk of premature death. The scientists managed to build a genetic signature capable of predicting the survival time of patients and dividing them into low-risk and high-risk groups.
The high-risk group survived an average of 348 days after diagnosis, and the low-risk group survived an average of 493 days.
Experts believe that this finding could help improve the treatment of glioblastoma and it is hoped that, in the future, it will be possible “to use this genetic signature to determine the best treatments,” explains Wu Anhua, leader of the study published in the journal Neurology.
