Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) in Barcelona, Spain is an institutional leader in research proposing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) as liquid biopsy for the early diagnosis, prognosis, therapeutic management, and tracking of brain cancer. The exploitation of CSF-derived circulating DNA as liquid biopsy promises a more accurate, more effective, and less invasive approach to unmasking the molecular characteristics of brain tumors, the VHIO scientist believe. As reported in an open-access article published on November 10, 2015 in Nature Communications, the VHIO Gene Expression and Cancer Group, led by Joan Seoane, Ph.D., has pioneered research evidencing demonstrating the utility of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) as liquid biopsy for the potential prognosis, treatment, identification, and tracking of brain tumor genomic alterations, not only in real time, but over time. Concentrations of circulating CNS-tumor-derived DNA are very low in plasma, but very high in CSF. The new article in Nature Communications is titled “Cerebrospinal Fluid-Derived Circulating Tumor DNA Better Represents the Genomic Alterations of Brain Tumors Than Plasma.” Dr. Seoane, the senior author of this article, is Director of Translational Research, VHIO; Head of the Gene Expression and Cancer Laboratory, VHIO, ICREA Professor, and Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and he led the current study. The first author of the new article is Leticia De Mattos-Arruda (photo), M.D., a medical oncologist in Dr. Soane’s group. In addition to her affiliation with VHIO, Dr. Mattoa-Aruda is also affiliated with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSCC) in New York, and with the UAB in Barcelona.Login Or Register To Read Full Story