Public release date: 15-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael C. Purdy purdym@wustl.edu 314-286-0122 Washington University School of Medicine
Insights from a genetic condition that causes brain cancer are helping scientists better understand the most common type of brain tumor in children.
In new research, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a cell growth pathway that is unusually active in pediatric brain tumors known as gliomas. They previously identified the same growth pathway as a critical contributor to brain tumor formation and growth in neurofibromatosis-1 (NF1), an inherited cancer predisposition syndrome.
"This suggests that the tools we've been developing to diagnose and treat NF1 may also be helpful for sporadic brain tumors," says senior author David H. Gutmann, MD, PhD, the Donald O. Schnuck Family Professor of Neurology.
The findings appear Dec. 1 in Genes and Development.
NF1 is among the most common tumor predisposition syndromes, but it accounts for only about 15 percent of pediatric low-grade gliomas known as pilocytic astrocytomas. The majority of these brain tumors occur sporadically in people without NF1.
Earlier research showed that most sporadic pilocytic astrocytomas possess an abnormal form of a signaling protein known as BRAF. In tumor cells, a piece of another protein is erroneously fused to the business end of BRAF.
Scientists suspected that the odd protein fusion spurred cells to grow and divide more often, leading to tumors. However, when they gave mice the same aberrant form of BRAF, they observed a variety of results. Sometimes gliomas formed, but in other cases, there was no discernible effect or a brief period of increased growth and cell division. In other studies, the cells grew old and died prematurely.
Gutmann, director of the Washington University Neurofibromatosis Center, previously showed that mouse NF1-associated gliomas arise from certain brain cells.
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Study offers clues to cause of kids' brain tumors