Despite all research efforts, brain tumors remain the only ones that have not shown significant progress in the last 30 years. Why? “The main limitation of the approach taken so far is to consider gliomas (brain tumors) like any other tumor of any other organ – explain the authors –. Instead, and here is the novelty, the growth of a brain tumor is partly determined and regulated by the activity of the brain itself”. The study was published in ‘Lancet Neurology’.
The answer comes from a multidisciplinary team directed by Maurizio Corbetta, Department of Neuroscience of the University of Padua and principal investigator of the Advanced Biomedical Research Foundation (Vimm) and composed entirely of researchers from the University of Padua: Alessandro Salvalaggio (neurologist), Lorenzo Pini (psychologist) and Alessandra Bertoldo (engineer).
“The main limitation of the approach taken so far is to consider gliomas (brain tumors) like any other tumor of any other organ – explain the authors -. Instead, and here’s the news, the growth of a brain tumor is partly determined and regulated by the activity of the brain itself“. The study was published in ‘Lancet Neurology’.
“The brain is our most complex organ, in which the approximately 100 billion neurons are organized among themselves according to a complex structure (structural connectome) forming specific networks of activity (functional connectome). Tumor cells – the researchers continue – integrate in the connectome and exploit its structural and functional connections to grow and spread. Consequently, the study of brain connectivity takes on a new role in determining the prognosis of these patients, but above all it provides new treatment strategies.”
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