High-grade glioma: can we teach an old dogma new tricks?

The best efforts of clinicians and biologists battling high-grade glioma (HGG) have been overshadowed by two cruel facts: these tumors are essentially incurable and will kill most patients within months, and emergent knowledge of the genetic alterations in HGG has done nothing to ease this burden of suffering. In this issue of Cancer Cell, Phillips et al. report an extensive study of the gene expression profiles of a large cohort of HGG. Their data provide new clues to the origins of this disease and suggest potential targets for novel therapies.