Ancestral Progenitors in Glioblastoma Tumor Recurrence

Roeland GW Verhaak, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Division of Quantitative Sciences, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses a study that examined the alteration of the p53 pathway and ancestral progenitors to determine if they were associated with tumor recurrence in glioblastoma.

Clinical Pearls:

• This study compared the primary tumor sample and the recurrent tumor sample from the same patient in 23 patients.
• The whole genome sequencing dataset, which included 10 patients, identified sets of tumor cells that may explain why the recurrent tumor cell is chemo resistant.
• In 2 out of the 10 patients in the dataset, the tumor recurrence was initiated by an ancestral tumor cell.
• In 4 of the 10 patients, researchers saw clonal evolution.

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