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I read the title and it is as if I can't read English.. no clue what it says...

Since all glial cells share the same origin, most cerebral gliomas tend to be thought of coming from astrocytic origin, as they closely resemble astrocyte morphology. Here the authors provide evidence that astrocyte tumors of X-linked origin among others are in fact of ependymal, rather radial, glial cells. Juvenile brain tumors are mainly removed by surgery, so determining a genetic origin as well as the specific cell type can lead to targeted drug therapeutics.

No problem. I posted a snip-it of what the authors are saying.

Oh my gosh this is wonderful news, we might be able to create more efficient modalities for treatment

Yup, that's the end goal.

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Is it correct to simplify this as ‘new information will allow us to better treat brain tumors with medication’, or is that missing the point?

I don't think so. It's technically new information as far as where are these brain tumors arising (where the mutation(s) are occurring during fetal development to create astroblastomas). It's not completely new in the sense that these genes have been known just activation, order and silence has been unclear until now.

Finally!

I have literally no idea what this means, ELI5?

I have posted a summary snip-it. It should be the first comment-post. Basically the paper provides evidence that most sex-linked, X-chromosome, cerebral brain tumors (also referred as astroblastomas) are from the same cell type in fetal development. With this cell origin and gene types known possible drug therapeutics can be made targeting these cells in juvenile and possibly young adult brains. Most brain tumors of cerebral origin have to be removed surgically as drug therapeutics are non-existent.

Glial cells are the support cells of neurons in the brain, so gliomas are the cells that are the tumors and there are several types of glial cells but to group all brain tumor types you can call them astroblastomas.

Oh! This is a huge development. Thankyou.

This could also mean that brain cancer treatments will be gender specific if cancer strains adapt to genders differently.

Do all cancers carry the same genetic marker for which gendered human they exist in? Hypothetically if they did couldn't we eventually target that as a potential cure for cancer?

Way out of my depth here but this seems to be staggering in its implications. Any causation from human sex in cancers genetics seems like a viable path for targeting cancer.

It's ok. You bring up a good point about treatment. And this may get more technical and we could reach a point where I won't have an answer for you.

So first, the X-linked gene is really one of a set of genes mentioned in this paper and what they found was other genes are binding to the X-chromosome inactivated BEND2 gene, this fusion is causing over expression of the pair eventually causing tumors/abnormalities during fetal development. We know women have two copies of the x chromosomes and we see female juveniles are more likely to get astroblastomas; boys can get astroblastomas as well it's just not as common. There were astroblastoma specimens used in this paper from males as well which had the same mutations.

Let's say eventually some scientists find a way to target these genes or cell lines. Would we see girls having better outcomes on the chemotherapy drugs than boys? I would have to say that is the most likely possibility because we see that with other medicines where one group has a better outcome than the others just based on their specific cell biology.

Unfortunately cancers can carry many different types of genetic mutations, whether it be a single deletion of a DNA base, an insertion of a DNA base, a translocation of a chromosome, a reversal of a chromosome, the list goes on. This paper mentions translocations of X-chromosome genes with chromosome number 22, which C22 is found in boys and girls hence how boys can get brain tumors this way as well. Also, there are several RNA mutations that this paper identifies as well.