2023-09-26 16:34:16
The area of the brain where the cancer develops can make a difference for patients with glioblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor. If it grows in areas with high fiber density, the patient’s survival from the moment of diagnosis is shorter; vice versa, when glioblastoma is localized in brain regions with low fiber density, the prognosis is better. The greater or lesser presence of fibers is therefore “a new non-invasive diagnostic index that predicts survival in brain tumors”. The discovery – the subject of an Italian and international patent – is described in a study published in ‘Jama Neurology’, the result of a collaboration between the universities of Padua, Berlin and Bordeaux and the Veneto Oncology Institute (Iov) of Padua. The coordinator is Maurizio Corbetta, professor of Neurology, director of the neurological clinic of the University Hospital of Padua and Principal Investigator of Vimm, the Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine.
There are still no effective therapies against glioblastoma, explain Vimm and UniPd. So far, most efforts have focused on the characteristics of the tumor (its mutations, its interactions with the immune system, its response to therapy). In this work, however, attention was focused on the characteristics of the affected organ. The brain is made up of neurons and the connectome, the set of fibers that connect the various brain areas to each other. Connections comparable to roads, which connect the different regions of the brain. In the new Italian-led study, scientists have shown that the prognosis of glioblastoma also and above all depends on the density of structural connections in the area where the cancer develops. In particular, it has been seen that when the density of these fibers is high, survival is lower, while it is greater when the fiber density is lower. “The reason – the authors hypothesize – may be that when the tumor grows in regions where there are more fibres, or more ‘roads’, it is more likely to spread to the remaining regions of the brain”.
The strategy developed by Corbetta, by Alessandro Salvalaggio, researcher at the Department of Neuroscience of the University of Padua, and by Lorenzo Pini, research fellow at the Padova Neuroscience Center and Vimm, therefore allows us to calculate “an index of density of the fibers of substance white where the tumor grows without the need for specific tests, but only starting from the brain MRI that all patients perform before surgery”.
“The results of this study – comments Corbetta – demonstrate how the approach to glioblastoma cannot fail to consider the special organ in which it grows, the human brain. The evidence emerging from this research, in addition to having led to the creation of a non-specific diagnostic index invasive, provide possible ideas and indications for new therapeutic approaches”.
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