An astrocytoma is a type of primary brain tumour that usually affects adults younger than 50 and represents one of the major causes of cancer-related disease and death in patients of this age group. They are characterised by mutations in two genes called IDH1 & IDH2. Astrocytomas can occur anywhere in the brain and typically involve large areas well beyond what we can visualise with scans due to their invasive nature. Because of this, full surgical removal is not possible, and tumours recur either within the same site as surgery or in distant parts of the brain.

After treatment, some astrocytomas progress and develop  into much more aggressive lesions. This is known as malignant transformation and these tumours are resistant to conventional radio-chemotherapy. However, it is unclear how and why they transform, and at what point in time they transform into a deadly disease. Understanding the mechanism of transformation is therefore key to being able to develop individualised treatment plans for patients with this tumour type.

Our preliminary work showed that inflammation within the tumour is an early change relevant to malignant transformation and that inflammatory cells travel from outside of the brain, rather than from within the brain itself.

This project aims to further study astrocytomas to understand why inflammation pushes the tumour to become aggressive and to see if we can identify these early changes in scans and tissue. We think treating inflammation early in the course of the disease could make astrocytomas a controllable rather than fatal tumour.