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A new study describes a method for identifying where glioblastoma is likely to recur based on fluid moving through and near the tumor.<\/p>\n
Glioblastoma is a devastatingly effective brain cancer. Doctors can cut it out or blast it with radiation, but that only buys time. The cancer has an insidious ability to hide enough tumor cells in tissue around the tumor to allow it to return as deadly as ever.<\/p>\n
Patients diagnosed with glioblastoma survive for an average of 15 months.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s needed is a better way of identifying those hidden cancer cells and predicting where the tumor might grow next. Jennifer Munson believes she and her research team at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC have developed a tool to do just that.<\/p>\n
Their method, described in npj Biomedical Innovations<\/a>, combines magnetic resonance imaging, Munson\u2019s in-depth knowledge of how fluid moves through human tissues, and an algorithm Munson\u2019s team developed to identify and predict where the cancer might reappear.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can\u2019t find the tumor cells, you can\u2019t kill the tumor cells<\/a>, whether that\u2019s by cutting them out, hitting them with radiation therapy, or getting drugs to them,\u201d says Munson, professor and director of the FBRI Cancer Research Center\u2014Roanoke. \u201cThis is a method that now we believe can allow us to find those tumor cells.\u201d<\/p>\n Currently, doctors plan surgeries to remove glioblastoma tumors based on radiological scans, but that only provides a view of the area just outside the cancer\u2019s edge. During surgery, fluorescent dyes highlight cancer cells, but the dyes don\u2019t penetrate deeply and the cells have to be visible to the eye.<\/p>\n \u201cThose methods are not going to see a cell that has migrated or invaded further into the tissue, which is something that we think we can do with this method,\u201d says Munson, who also holds an appointment in the biomedical engineering and mechanics department.<\/p>\n