The Molecular Anatomy of Diffuse Gliomas in Adults

Diffuse gliomas encompass a diverse group of tumors of the central nervous system that primarily affect the brain. Patients suffer from a poor prognosis despite radical treatment with surgery, radio- and chemotherapy. Microscopic evaluation by a neuropathologist has been the established method for the clinical diagnosis and determination of follow-up for over a century. Nevertheless, pathology assessment suffers from sampling biases and interobserver variability. This thesis details a number of studies that focus on the molecular analysis of this tumor type. They are a part of a larger series of papers in the past decade that demonstrate that molecular diagnostics can provide an unambiguous diagnosis and determination of follow-up treatment.