Correlating Genomic Features with the Immune Microenvironment in Pediatric Glioma
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About this
Project
Brain cancers cause more childhood deaths than any other type of cancer, especially high-grade glioma (HGG) which is incurable and low grade glioma (LGG) which causes decreased quality of life. New treatment methods using the immune system (which is composed of cells that are involved in fighting infection), called immunotherapies, offer promise for LGG and HGG in children. In order to use immunotherapy in childhood glioma, it is important that we understand the immune system response to these tumors
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Scientists
What are the goals of this project?
This project aims to determine the immune infiltrative pattern in tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) of pLGG associated with mutations in BRAF and compare to non-BRAF mutated pediatric low grade glioma (pLGG) tumors and analyze TIME comparing PTEN wild type (wt) and PTEN mutant pediatric high grade glioma (pHGG) at diagnosis.
What is the impact of this project?
Understanding the effect tumor mutations, specifically BRAF and PTEN, have on the TIME is key to determining how to successfully combine therapies and treat the most devastating of tumors, including LGG and HGG in children.
Why is the CBTN request important to this project?
It is critical that we understand what immune phenotypes may be present based on immunogenomic profiling and it does not make sense to recollect and process new cases especially when limited to only one center. This will also help to decide the final panel to stain for qmIF. In review of cases from CUIMC we have identified ~10 cases with diagnostic tissue and complete clinical data for pHGG and ~60 cases with pLGG. This cohort will be used for qmIF analysis.
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Institutions
related
Histologies
High-Grade Glioma
High-grade Gliomas (HGG) or astrocytomas in children nearly always result in a dismal prognosis. Although novel therapeutic approaches are currently in development, preclinical testing has been limited, due to a lack of pediatric-specific HGG preclinical models. These models are needed to help test
Low-Grade Glioma
Low-Grade Gliomas also called astrocytomas are the most common cancer of the central nervous system in children. They represent a heterogeneous group of tumors that can be discovered anywhere within the brain or spinal cord. Although surgical resection may be curative, up to 20% of children still su