According to a story from healthnewsdigest.com, an important source of data related to brain cancer has just become widely available to global researchers. This dataset was supported by Georgetown University, and should be a potentially crucial resource for cancer researchers and scientists. The data is compilation of information from 14 contributing institutions comprising a total of 671 adult brain cancer patients.
About Brain Cancer
Brain cancer refers to any malignant tumor that originates in the brain, although cancer that begins in other parts of the body can also spread to the brain. The cause of brain cancer remains a mystery, although there may be several risk factors, including the Epstein-Barr virus, radiation exposure, and vinyl chloride exposure. Types of brain cancer include glioblastoma, which is highly aggressive and is the most common kind in adults, and medulloblastoma, which is the most common type to appear in children. Symptoms can vary depending on where the tumor is located, but may include personality changes, vomiting, headaches, vision issues, and seizures. In advanced disease, the patient may lose consciousness. Treatment of brain cancer includes chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery. Outcomes vary depending on the cancer type and the stage at which it is detected. To learn more about brain cancer, click here.
About the Data
Information about the dataset is available online at Scientific Data, a website that is a valuable tool for thousands of researchers all over the world. This set of data is unique because it contains detailed information about the course of disease for each patient, including the patient’s genome, treatment outcomes, and diagnostic info. It is rare for such a thorough profile for each patient to be recorded. The genomic data is highly detailed, recording genetic abnormalities within individual tumors such as the under or over expression of certain genes, or gene repetitions in a chromosome. The data contains samples from a variety of brain cancer types, including astrocytoma, glioblastoma, and oligodendroglioma.
The data is also freely available and easy to use.
“We want this data to be used by the broadest audience,” says Dr. Yuriy Gusev, who is the first author on the paper announcing the data’s release.
The data was gathered over a two year period, from 2004 to 2006. You can learn more information about the dataset here.
