Medulloblastoma is the most common kind of cancerous brain tumor found in children. After initial, successful treatment, those affected can then often experience a relapse that can no longer be controlled, despite intensive cancer treatments. By comprehensively conducting a molecular analysis of the cerebrospinal fluid, chemists and physicians at the University of Vienna and the JKU learned important, vital information about the aggressive nature of medulloblastomas that will help find approaches to create treatment options. Their multiomics study was published in the open access journal "Cancers MDPI".

The collaboration effort with, among others, Christopher Gerner (University of Vienna) and Wolfgang Buchberger (Johannes Kepler University Linz), focused on collecting proteomics, metabolomics and lipidomics data sets and merging these using state-of-the-art mass spectrometric methods. In addition to detecting characteristic tumor markers, the scientists showed that tumor-associated macrophages directly produce tumor-promoting proteins as well as additional lipid hormones, which in turn change the metabolism in a tumor-supporting way. A microenvironment can be created, directly supporting the formation of therapy-resistant tumor cells.