Future Strategies on Glioma Research: From Big Data to the Clinic

Glioma, as the most common and aggressive malignant central nervous system (CNS) tumor with generally poor prognosis, has been attracting much attention in the last decade [1]. Temozolomide was firstly available in the United States in 1999 as a chemotherapy drug for treating brain cancers and remains as the first-line treatment for glioma. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified glioma into four main grades according to the degree of malignancy in 2007, which were updated in 2016 with the introduction of significant molecular alternations. Also in 2016, the Chinese Glioma Cooperative Group (CGCG) published the first guideline for adult diffuse gliomas [2], representing the only national consensus for the diagnosis and treatment of adult gliomas up till now. Up till now, hundreds of clinical trials targeted specifically on glioma had been conducted, which unfortunately have not led to a radical improvement in the dismal prognosis of gliomas. Future strategies for glioma research became clear with the establishment of Glioblastoma Multiforme Adaptive Global Innovative Learning Environment (GBM AGILE) and radiomics-associated glioma heterogeneity quantification, as well as development in cancer computational biology and other precision medicine-based GBM studies. The major features of future strategies for glioma research are thus defined to be multi-center involved, big data-based, and computationally-analyzed. Guided by this consensus, the 1 Annual Meeting of Society for Neuro-Oncology of China (SNOChina 2017) was held on March 17–19, 2017 in Beijing, China. The meeting was hosted by the Chinese Medical Doctor Association (CMDA), SNOChina, and Beijing Surgical Institute (BJNI). SNOChina 2017 was initiated by Prof. Tao Jiang, the president of SNOChina and chairman of the subcommittee on brain glioma, CMDA. SNOChina 2017 was aimed at sharing the clinical management experience, new research progress, and thoughts on the related medical service for glioma. Over 20 Chinese and American leading figures on glioma joined the meeting as invited speakers, together with around 1000 participants domestically and abroad, who are mostly clinicians working on glioma treatment. SNOChina2017 comprised four forums during the 3-day meeting, including (1) Youth Forum, which was focused on the presentation of the latest glioma research progress, mostly about omics data analysis and precision medicine; (2) Academician Forum, which was given by the academicians from Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), mainly about the overview of glioma management and research; (3) Master Forum, which was given by the front-line clinicians, mainly about sharing practice skills and future glioma-associated education plan; and (4) International Summit Forum, where overseas specialists reviewed current status for both clinical diagnosis procedures and hospital management of glioma, and provided insightful perspective for the challenges facing and future directions.