Cerebrospinal fluid may hold the keys to brain cancer identification and treatment, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Tumor components and immune response indicators can be found in cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF, when someone has a brain tumor, in a new test developed by Chetan Bettagowda, director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins and one of the test’s developers. 

Bettegowda: What we did was develop a test that utilizes a technology called next generation sequencing which allows us to sequence hundreds, thousands, millions of regions of the genome in a very rapid fashion. So what we did was to take a cohort of individuals with and without cancers of the central nervous system, we identified CSF from these patients. We developed ways to really look at two or three key factors associated for the tumor cell and a couple of factors associated with the immune cells.   :33

Bettegowda says the assessments are helpful in assessing both the cancer and how the body is responding to it, important for treatment. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.