Dr. Dan Brat interviewed on Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine Podcast

In the latest episode of the Northwestern Medicine Breakthroughs podcast, Daniel Brat, MD, PhD discusses the emerging integrated molecular-histomorphological classification of diffuse gliomas. In an episode entitled "A New Way to Diagnose Brain Tumors", Dr. Brat -- the new chairman of the Northwestern Pathology -- states that "whenever you go through a reclassification that dramatic, there's going to be gaps in knowledge and gaps in practice and we are recognizing those gaps on a

Dr. Dan Brat

daily basis, on a yearly basis.  And we as a brain tumor community internationally are working to fill those gaps in knowledge. So what we found for example, is that once you classify molecular diseases, the grading criteria that we used in the past to grade things as [World Health Organization] grade one, grade two, grade three, grade four, which really served to predict how patients are going to fair and what type of therapies they are going to need, all of those grading criteria needed to be recalibrated. And that's a significant undertaking as well. And we have certain initiatives within the international community through an organization called cIMPACT-Now [Consortium to Inform Molecular and Practical Approaches to CNS Tumor Taxonomy – Not Official WHO]. And we as a group, including some colleagues here at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, are writing the guidelines for new grading criteria for the diffuse gliomas within the molecular era." . The podcast aired on May 15 and is available on iTunes and SoundClound.