In Brain News, Brain Tumour Data, Research News

Faster diagnosis is a very complex landscape, of which liquid biopsies are a small part. At brainstrust, we are working on a position paper with the NCRI which will be published soon exploring this area of brain cancer research.

This article looks at the comprehensive and explorative collection published on Neuro-Oncology Advances. The collection focuses on the future of liquid biopsies for the detection, diagnosis and monitoring of Glioma. Pieces from Susan Short, Paul Brennan and Dimitrios Mathios, among others, cover the changes liquid biopsies could make for the patient pathway as well as the current advances we’re seeing in this field.

Why are liquid biopsies being explored? Image of red blood cells - an example of the kind of liquids that could be used in liquid biopsies

As Professor Susan C Short writes in her piece ‘Unmet need for liquid biomarkers and the Brain’, the current landscape for assessing how Glioma responds to treatment has many challenges. Some challenges are due to the time frame in which progression and response occur, as well as the accuracy of the techniques we employ.

Currently, our main method of monitoring progression is visual human inspection of imaging data collected from brain scans. However, availability of imaging is limited in some centres and it is also not feasible for certain brain tumour cases. This approach is also sometimes inaccurate and not refined enough for the impact it has on the lives of those living with the disease – sometimes leaving patients with unfortunate waiting times, an inability to pursue novel treatments or, in the worst case, a misdiagnosis. As a result, there is a push for a more accurate, speedy and reliable method.

Liquid biopsy is a method by which bodily fluid, such as blood, is examined and used for diagnosis. Something such as a simple blood test would allow clinicians to monitor and detect a Glioma, as the cells in your blood would store this information. This could therefore be an answer to the issues presented by monitoring progression through visual human inspection of imaging.

What are some top notes from the supplements?

Top notes from this supplement are:

The detection of a validated blood based-specific markers through a non-invasive approach, such as liquid biopsy, will not only enable clinical neuro-oncologists the opportunity to assess treatment response in real time and monitor impending disease progression and recurrence, but also identify actionable molecular targets to better stratify patients to the appropriate clinical trials.

  • There is concern that the tests may perform less well in patients with early stage disease.
  • Developing non-invasive techniques for diagnostic monitoring purposes could have tremendous implications, affording the opportunity to change the way clinical Neuro-Oncology is practiced.
  • Development of a user-friendly web-based platform to upload molecular and clinical data extracted from liquid biopsy specimens is crucial.
  • Clinical trials need to be designed where liquid biopsy is used to fill a specific gap in the care pathway, complementary to radiological or other established investigations.
  • The impact for genetic markers to predict disease in a healthy population has been deemed low.
  • Thus far none of the identified liquid biomarkers for patients with glioma is ready for clinical implementation, but we are working towards it.
  • There are various methods of using liquid biopsies for monitoring and diagnosing Glioma to assess.
  • While prospective data are currently lacking, there has been early success in recent approaches.

To conclude, the research landscape continues to explore and increase our understanding of new technologies to support the way we treat and diagnose brain cancer. Liquid biopsies would be a new tool which could be utilised in multiple areas. While some of those areas are a topic of debate regarding how the changes would impact the patient community – any tool that can offer alternative approaches which can be stratified for the community is a worthwhile and potentially field-altering venture.

 

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If you or someone you love is living with a brain tumour and have any questions around this latest news, or want to access support, give us a call on 01983 292 405 or email hello@brainstrust.org.uk. You can also visit our little brainstrust website which features support for children affected by brain tumour.

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Introduction

The Brain Tumour Data Dashboard lets you explore up -to-date, population level data about the brain tumours diagnosed in England between 2013 and 2015. Using the drop down menus on the left you can select different groups of patients to view in the charts below. In these charts the number of patients for every 100 diagnoses is displayed as images of people. Patients have been grouped by date of diagnosis, type of tumour, age, gender, and region in England.

For each group of patients you can explore the different routes to diagnosis, the proportion of those who received chemotherapy or radiotherapy, as well as the survival of the patients within each group. For more information about what these metrics mean please see the glossary.

How to use

  1. Select the year of diagnosis using the drop down menu.
  2. Select your patient group of interest from the four drop down menus in the following order:
    1. Tumour group
    2. Age at diagnosis
    3. Region of England
    4. Gender of patient
  3. To view a second chart to compare different groups of patients, click the ‘compare’ button.The second chart will appear below the first chart.

*Note that the tool is best used on a laptop or tablet rather than a mobile phone*

Unavailable data

Some of the data in these charts is not available.There are two main reasons for this:

  1. How the data has been grouped

If you cannot select a patient group from the drop down menus, the data is unavailable because of how the data has been organised.

Public Health England has grouped the data like a branching tree. The bottom of the tree contains all the patients with brain tumours, and then each branch divides the data by a certain characteristics, like age, or location of tumour. But the data is divided in an order, starting with location of the tumour (endocrine or brain), then by age, region, and gender. Age is at the start because it makes a bigger difference to survival rates and treatment rates than gender or region. Sometimes, after the data has been split by type of tumour and age, there is not enough data to be split again. This is because to protect patient confidentiality groups cannot contain less than 100 patients. Because some groups cannot be split further, you cannot create ‘totals’ for everyone by region or gender. For example, you cannot see results for all ages by region, or all brain tumours by gender. If these totals were calculated and released, it might be possible to identify patients, which is why Public Health England cannot release this data.

  1. Statistical reasons and data availability

If you can select a patient group from the chart menus, but the chart does not display, the data is unavailable for one of several reasons:

  1. Data is not yet available for the selected year from Public Health England.
  2. Data is not available because the data quality is too poor to release this statistic.
  3. Data is not available as the statistic is not appropriate for this group.
  4. Data is not available because the standard error of the estimate was greater than 20% and so the estimate has been supressed.

Up to date brain tumour data

Brain tumour data may influence the decisions you make about your care. Data also helps you understand the bigger picture, or landscape, in which you find yourself.

Brain tumour data and statistics influence the focus, and work of organisations like brainstrust. The information helps us to understand the scale and impact of the problems we are setting out to solve.

This tool helps you understand the landscape in which you find yourself having been diagnosed with a brain tumour. This landscape can be particularly tricky to navigate as there are many different types of brain tumour, all of which have a different impact.

The information you see represents the most up-to-date, official, population level brain tumour data available for England. Over time we will be adding to the brain tumour data available and publishing reports, with recommendations, as a result of what we learn from this data.

The data behind this content has come from Public Health England’s National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) and is a direct result of the ‘Get Data Out’ project.

This project provides anonymised population level brain tumour data for public use in the form of standard output tables, accessible here: http://cancerdata.nhs.uk/standardoutput

Incidence

The number or rate (per head of population) of new cases of a disease diagnosed in a given population during a specified time period (usually a calendar year). The crude rate is the total number of cases divided by the mid-year population, usually expressed per 100,000 population.

Malignant

Malignant tumours which grow by invasion into surrounding tissues and have the ability to metastasise to distant sites

Mortality

The number or rate (per head of population) of deaths in a given population during a specified time period (usually a calendar year). The crude rate is the total number of deaths divided by the mid-year population, usually expressed per 100,000 population.

Non-malignant

Not cancerous. Non-malignant tumours may grow larger but do not spread to other parts of the body.

Survival

The length of time from the date of diagnosis for a disease, such as cancer, that patients diagnosed with the disease are still alive. In a clinical trial, measuring the survival is one way to see how well a new treatment works. Also called ‘overall survival’ or ‘OS’.

Routes to Diagnosis

Under the ‘Routes to Diagnosis’ tab in the Brain Tumour Data Dashboard, you can explore the ways patients have been diagnosed with brain tumours. There are many ways, or routes, for cancers to be diagnosed in the NHS. A ‘route to diagnosis’ is the series of events between a patient and the healthcare system that leads to a diagnosis of cancer. The routes include:

  1. Two Week Wait

Patients are urgently referred by their GP for suspected cancer via the Two Week Wait system and are seen by a specialist within 2 weeks where they are diagnosed.

  1. GP referral

Diagnosis via a GP referral includes routine and urgent referrals where the patient was not referred under the Two Week Wait system.

  1. Emergency Presentation

Cancers can be diagnosed via emergency situations such as via A&E, emergency GP referral, emergency transfer or emergency admission.

  1. Outpatient

Outpatient cancer diagnoses include diagnoses via an elective route which started with an outpatient appointment that is either a self-referral or consultant to consultant referral. (It does not include those under the Two Week Wait referral system).

  1. Inpatient elective

Diagnosis via an inpatient elective route is where diagnosis occurs after the patient has been admitted into secondary care from a waiting list, or where the admission is booked or planned.

  1. Death Certificate Only

Diagnoses made by Death Certificate Only are made where there is no more information about the cancer diagnosis other than the cancer related death notifications. The date of diagnosis is the same as that of the date of death.

  1. Unknown

For some patients with a cancer diagnosis, there is no relevant data available to understand the route to diagnosis.

 

More information

If any of the statistical terms in this section of the brainstrust website are hard to understand, we recommend looking them up here:

Cancer Research UK’s Cancer Statistics Explained

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/cancer-stats-explained/statistics-terminology-explained#heading-Seven

If you are looking for help understanding terms relating specifically to brain tumours, and treatment, then the brainstrust glossary is available here:

https://www.brainstrust.org.uk/advice-glossary.php