...

This project is a collaboration between Andrew Trister at (Sage Bionetworks) and Kristin Swanson at the (University of Washington) to make measurements of measure tumor growth kinetics in two modes (diffusion and proliferation) from pretreatment magnetic resonance images (MRIs). Ideally, two pretreatment MRIs with T1+gad and T2-weighted images are used to measure the net proliferation and diffusion rates, and in . In previous work, these measurements have informed characteristics of tumor progression after treatment [1]. They have shown that the ratio of these two can be this ratio, measured from a single time point image and this , is sufficient to discriminate determine survival. Interestingly, they have measured over two orders of magnitude difference in these parameters among patients, and feel that this demonstrates demonstrating a significant difference in the underlying biology of individual tumors. They are using the TCGA The Cancer Genome Atlas’ molecular measurements to investigate the underlying biological perturbations that are driving these different modes of progression.

To this end, they are first investigating examine the correlation between the different subtypes of glioblastoma as as described by Verhaak and colleagues and the  and their modes of progression. In parallel, they thought to do a similar analysis is performed with the VASARI Research Project to  to better understand if there are other other, perhaps more informative, sequences on MRI that may be more informative. They will then leverage the expertise at Sage Bionetworks to investigate driver genes, as well as to construct network representations of multiple perturbations seen in glioblastoma in an effort , to better elucidate changes that may be seen occur among individual patients.

Ideally, they anticipate using results from these experiments to inform further investigation for into drug discovery and clinical trial design.

Supporting Documentation and Metadata

...

1. A novel patient-specific model of glioma growth kinetics elucidates underlying biology as measured by gene expression microarray (presented at Markers in Cancer 2012, Oct 11-13, 2012)
   1. Abstract
   2. Poster (PDF)

References

1. A. E. Boone, R. Rockne, M. M. Mrugala, K. R. Swanson. Pre-treatment glioblastoma proliferation and invasion kinetics: A mechanism to predict pseudo progression. Society for Neuro-Oncology, 2010., Neuro-Oncology, 12(Supp 4):118, 2010