CNS cancer articles within Nature

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  • Letter
    | Open Access

    Medulloblastoma is the most common brain tumour in children; using whole-genome sequencing of tumour samples the authors show that the clinically challenging Group 3 and 4 tumours can be tetraploid, and reveal the expression of the first medulloblastoma fusion genes identified.

    • David T. W. Jones
    • , Natalie Jäger
    •  & Peter Lichter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumour in children; having assembled over 1,000 samples the authors report that somatic copy number aberrations are common in medulloblastoma, in particular a tandem duplication of SNCAIP, a gene associated with Parkinson’s disease, which is restricted to subgroup 4α, and translocations of PVT1, which are restricted to Group 3.

    • Paul A. Northcott
    • , David J. H. Shih
    •  & Michael D. Taylor

  • Letter |

    Medulloblastoma is the most common brain tumour in children; using exome sequencing of tumour samples the authors show that these cancers have low mutation rates and identify 12 significantly mutated genes, among them the gene encoding RNA helicase DDX3X.

    • Trevor J. Pugh
    • , Shyamal Dilhan Weeraratne
    •  & Yoon-Jae Cho

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whole-genome sequencing of medulloblastoma samples reveals several recurrent mutations in genes not previously implicated in the disease, many of which affect components of the epigenetic machinery in different disease subgroups.

    • Giles Robinson
    • , Matthew Parker
    •  & Richard J. Gilbertson

  • Letter |

    Medulloblastomas are the most common malignant childhood brain tumours and are thought to arise from the cerebellum. There is substantial heterogeneity among medulloblastomas and some are thought to arise following aberrant Sonic Hedgehog pathway activation. It is now shown that a distinct subtype of medulloblastoma arises from the dorsal brainstem and is associated with altered WNT signalling. Distinct molecular and clinical profiles of the subtypes have implications for future treatment.

    • Paul Gibson
    • , Yiai Tong
    •  & Richard J. Gilbertson

  • Letter |

    Ependymoma is a type of neural tumour that arises throughout the central nervous system. Using comparative transcriptomics in mouse and human tumours, these authors home in on mutations that are specific to individual tumour subgroups. In doing so, they generate the first mouse model of ependymoma and demonstrate the power of interspecific genomic comparisons to interrogate cancer subgroups.

    • Robert A. Johnson
    • , Karen D. Wright
    •  & Richard J. Gilbertson

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