caBIG™ Feature – November 2006

Analyzing Brain Cancer In a "Big" Way

Multi-Step Team Process

To understand how both the GMDI and REMBRANDT work, one can picture a series of well-coordinated steps. First, a patient with a possible brain tumor elects to join an NCI-approved national clinical trial of brain cancer, and provides consent for research use of his or her tissue. Then, a participating neurosurgeon removes the possible tumor and shares the tissue sample with participating neuropathologists, who characterize it based on standard tumor-classifying techniques. Molecular biologists then play a role, extracting DNA from the tumor tissue and putting it through state-of-the-art studies of gene expression and characterization.

These studies include the use of DNA microarrays that identify telltale genes thought to be important in the development of tumors of the brain and central nervous system. Techniques also involve so-called "comparative genomic hybridization" in which the genes expressed in tumor tissue are compared to the genes expressed in normal tissue. The ultimate goal is for investigators to use brain tumor data to generate genetic "profiles" for each and every brain tumor type — and therefore, each and every patient.

At the same time, the process reaches into the clinic. Health care practitioners treat patients and record data electronically about progression of disease, responses to therapy, and overall health. Those records accrue in the computers of clinical data managers, who standardize the clinical data and pass it on to NCI data coordination centers and, ultimately, the NCI’s central repository.

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