Identifying secreted biomarkers in brain cancer

Stage IV brain cancer or glioblastoma (GBM) poses a major challenge with only 5 FDA approved chemotherapeutic drugs available for treatment. Since initial diagnosis, only 1 out of 10 patients will survive beyond 5 years. Moreover, there are no options other than neurosurgery to detect the grades of brain tumours. When a low- grade brain tumour progresses to grade IV GBM, multiple changes take place including amplifications of various oncogenes and whole chromosomes. In fact, patients with GBM tumours that exhibit chromosome7 multiplication have the poorest outcome of all patients.

Efforts are underway across many laboratories worldwide to understand how chromosome 7 specific genes could be used as markers for grade progression of brain cancer, however, all such studies require risky neurosurgery for removal of the tumour first. To avoid multiple invasive surgeries and expensive MRIs and focus more on markers detectable in blood/serum, the PhD studentship will aim to identify and develop tools to detect specific modified proteins in blood of brain tumour patients at various stages.

The final goal is to establish a blood-test to quickly detect biomarkers in patient blood which can inform pathology and/or risk of brain tumour patients.

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