Researchers identify the origin of a deadly brain cancer

Finding could lead to potential therapies. Researchers at McGill University are hopeful that the identification of the origin and a specific gene needed for tumour growth could lead to new therapeutics to treat a deadly brain cancer that arises in teens and young adults. The discovery relates to a subgroup of glioblastoma, a rare but aggressive form of cancer that typically proves fatal within three years of onset. The findings are published in the latest issue of the journal  Cell . To complete their study, the research team, led by McGill's Dr. Nada Jabado, Professor of Pediatrics and Human Genetics and Dr. Claudia Kleinman, Assistant Professor of Human Genetics, assembled the largest collection of samples for this subgroup of glioblastoma and discovered new cancer-causing mutations in a gene called PDGFRA, which drives cell division and growth when it is activated. The researchers noted that close to half of the patients at diagnosis and the vast majority at tumour recurrence had mutations in this gene, which was also unusually highly expressed in this subgroup of glioblastoma. "We investigated large public datasets of both children and adult patients in addition to those we had generated from patients' samples in the lab and came to the same conclusion, PDGFRA was unduly activated in these tumours.