Origins of glioma brain cancer found to be in the epigenome

While cancers often originate from mutations and other alterations of cells’ DNA, researchers in the Bernstein Laboratory at Dana-Farber and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have found that gliomas—incurable brain tumors—can arise due to changes in the epigenome, the collection of compounds that are deposited on DNA and alter gene activity without changing the sequence of DNA itself. The researchers have published their findings in the journal Cell.