Congratulations to Eugene Vaios, MD, MBA, who was awarded a 2025 Duke Cancer Institute-American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant. His project, titled "Leveraging Cell-Free DNA Methylation Patterns to Develop a Non-Invasive Diagnostic and Surveillance Platform for Patients with Brain Tumors," builds on his recent findings from work supported by his K38 award from the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Vaios' co-investigator is Evan Calabrese, MD, PhD, and collaborators include Mustafa Khasraw, MD; Kyle Walsh, PhD; and Bo Hu, PhD.
A barrier to understanding brain tumor biology, developing effective therapies and surveilling patients after treatment is the dependence on invasive surgical procedures for diagnosis. The identification of a non-invasive, prognostic biomarker for longitudinal molecular profiling could overcome existing challenges, improving risk stratification, clinical trial design, surveillance and standard of care. Dr. Vaios' study relies on brain tumor and peripheral blood biospecimens from the randomized VERTU (ACTRN12615000407594) trial, as well as biospecimens from the GRETeL (NCT05695976) and Duke Radiation Oncology Biorepository (NCT05480644) trials for validation.