Theragen ETEX said Tuesday that it has developed a technique, which can identify the cause of recurrence of pediatric brain tumor, using genetic analysis technique.

A team, led by professors from Seoul National University Hospital and Sunchon National University, conducted the genetic analysis of 17 children with recurrent malignant blastoma, who underwent surgical resection. A malignant blastoma is a type of brain tumor.

The team found that the frequency of DNA mutations in the recurrent tissues increased, while new mutations occurred in genes associated with cancer, such as PTEN and mTOR.

A distinctive feature of this study was that the team discovered the characteristic of malignant gliomas gene expression patterns in some of the tumors that were previously thought to be recurrent blastoma tumors.

There is no appropriate treatment for recurrent malignant blastoma now. Although the treatment success rate is not high, malignant gliomas are treatable as various studies are going on to treat the disease, the company said. “Therefore, it is essential to determine whether the patient is suffering from either a recurrent malignant blastoma or gliomas through genetic analysis,” it noted.

According to the company, the medical sector has recognized the research as a study, which has confirmed genetic analysis using next-generation sequence analysis (NGS) has a high utility value in the diagnosis of recurrent tumors

Also, Theragen ETEX expects that the possibility of target treatment through its genome analysis will provide a basis for introducing precision medicine into the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric brain tumors.

Acta Neuropathologica published the results of the study.