Refined glioma classification based on molecular pathology

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), which is a multidimensional and comprehensive analyses of genomic/epigenomic alterations, has identified novel molecular changes on multiple regulatory levels (genomic, transcriptional, epigenomic) in human gliomas. The development of new technologies, such as next generation sequencing, has accelerated systematic studies of the cancer genome in recent years. Accordingly, our understanding has rapidly expanded, and some of the newly discovered molecular alterations are critical for the application of personalized medicine. These kinds of analyses have, however, also revealed the complexity of the glioma molecular basis. In this review, we will summarize these novel genetic/epigenetic insights into the nature of glioma, and further discuss its genomic complexity.