Brain tumours show cell similarities

New research has identified common processes by which different types of brain tumours generate and use energy to survive in the brain.

Professor John Griffiths of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, UK, led the research. He used samples from 378 patients, monitoring the chemical reactions occurring inside the cells.

To do so, the levels of important chemicals were measured in each of five different types of brain tumour: glioblastomas, astrocytomas, meningiomas, oligodendrogliomas, and tumours that had spread to the brain, called brain metastases.

This showed that similar reactions were taking place in the different tumour types, suggesting that brain tumours adapt their chemical reactions in very similar ways to survive in the brain, despite starting in very different types of cells and regions, say the researchers. Findings were published in PLoS ONE last night (25 October).

"The revelation that different types of brain tumours appear to be using similar tricks to survive was startling," said Professor Griffiths.

"The next step is to try and understand how these seemingly very different tumour types are able to adapt their energy production to grow. In the future, it might mean that we could develop drugs that specifically damage these survival mechanisms."

Co-author Dr Madhu Basetti commented: "Our study is the first to use this approach to compare how different cancers use and produce energy, and look for similarities. The next steps are to investigate whether the same technique could be used to reveal more about how cancers control energy use."

Funding came from Cancer Research UK. Dr Justine Alford, of the charity, said: "Brain tumours are stubbornly hard to treat and we urgently need to find new approaches to tackling them. Research like this that reveals how brain tumours survive will help us find the disease’s weaknesses so we can exploit them."

Madhu, B. et al. Exploration of human brain tumour metabolism using pairwise metabolite-metabolite correlation analysis (MMCA) of HR-MAS 1H NMR Spectra. PLoS ONE 25 October 2017 [abstract]