LOUISVILLE — A new online tool developed by researchers at the University of Louisville promises to speed up the discovery of treatments for brain and nerve tumors, especially rare ones that have had limited research attention.
A team led by Akshitkumar Mistry, a neurosurgeon and scientist at UofL and UofL Health, has created the Atlas of Nervous System Tumors. It is the largest publicly available dataset of its kind and includes more than 7,000 tumor samples from the brain, spinal cord and nerves, which were drawn from biorepositories around the world. For each sample, the atlas combines gene activity data with clinical information such as patient age, tumor location and survival outcomes.
“Brain and nervous system tumors are incredibly diverse,” Mistry said. “This tool helps researchers quickly understand how these tumors behave at the genomic level, which can point the way to new or repurposed treatments that might be tested in clinical trials.”…