Survival meta-analyses for malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor patients published in Neuro-Oncology

M. Kolberg, first author
M. Kolberg, first author
Patients with the rare cancer type MPNST, which arises in the peripheral nervous system, have been treated and followed up at the Norwegian Radium Hospital (DNR) for many years. Researcher Dr. Matthias Kolberg in Professor Ragnhild A. Lothe's group has recently published a clinical update of MPNST patients from DNR, Skåne University Hospital and the Rizzoli Institute which shows that the prognosis was not dependent on whether the patients also had the hereditary cancer predisposition disease neurofibromatosis (NF1). This is a topic that is debated in the literature, and he did a meta-analysis of all published works over the last 50 years and examined survival as endpoint in patients with MPNST with and without NF1.

Only patients that did not overlap between multiple studies from the same institution were included (> 1800). The authors show that in recent studies there is no difference in prognosis depending NF1 status, and they conclude that the treatment of MPNST should be independent of NF1 status. Kolberg will conduct further research on this aggressive disease that affects young adults. No standard treatment exists today except surgery. This is one of the rare cancer types that are suitable to test treatment in a "No = 1 trial" configuration, i.e., every patient is a clinical trial. The team is participating in a national project that has No = 1 trial as one of its objectives.

Professor Lothe and her research group at the Institute for Cancer Research have studied this disease along with the clinic and pathology, and she now leads a European collaboration on this disease including Sigbjørn Smeland and Kirsten Sundby Hall from the Department of Oncology at OUS, Fredrik Mertens from Skåne University Hospital in Lund Sweden, and Piero Picci from the Rizzoli Institute in Bologna, Italy.

Personal cancer medicine is the vision for the Norwegian Cancer Genomics project led by Professor Ola Myklebost, see: www.cancergenomics.no

Links:

Survival meta-analyses for >1800 malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor patients with and without neurofibromatosis type 1.
Kolberg M, Høland M, Agesen TH, Brekke HR, Liestøl K, S Hall K, Mertens F, Picci P, Smeland S, Lothe RA.
Neuro Oncol. 2012 Nov 15.

Matthias Kolberg's publications

Ragnhild A. Lothe's laboratory  - Molecular Genetics Group

Department of Cancer Prevention

 

 
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