The findings were published Aug. 25 in Cancer Discovery and demonstrate that combining multiple biological markers, including tumor-derived DNA and immune cell signatures, is more effective for diagnosing central nervous system cancers than using any one marker alone.

“This study highlights how much more information we can gain when we evaluate several analytes together,” says senior study author Chetan Bettegowda, M.D., Ph.D., Harvey Cushing Professor and Director of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, director of the Reza Khatib Brain Tumor Research Center at Johns Hopkins, medical director of the Ludwig Center, and a senior author on the study.

“The ability to detect cancers with high specificity and also gain insight into the immune environment of the brain could be an important advance in the care of patients with brain tumors.”