Cerebrospinal fluid can tell lots about brain tumors, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Your brain and spinal cord are floating in something called cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF, and when brain tumors develop they shed cells and cellular components into this fluid. A new test developed by director of neurosurgery Chetan Bettegowda at Johns Hopkins and colleagues helps assess such tumors without the need for surgery.

Bettegowda: We know that the brain and spinal cord are bathed in cerebrospinal fluid. It's fluid that's naturally produced by the body, several hundred mls every day. And because it's in proximity to the brain and spinal cord we thought this would be a natural medium for us to be able to detect materials being shed by tumors or tumor associated cells. One of the cool advances of this study was that we've been able to now not only interrogate what's happening to the tumor without doing a biopsy but also understand what the microenvironment is doing.     :33

Bettegowda says using this test clinically is on the horizon. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.