Hunter Underhill
University of Utah, UT·Medicine & Clinical Research
Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and most aggressive adult brain tumor. Median survival is under 15 months, because the tumor nearly always returns.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
glioblastoma
brain tumor
neuro-oncology
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Reduce errors from next-generation sequencing so that very rare tumor DNA variants can be detected in blood plasma from glioblastoma patients.
- Demonstrate unbiased detection of glioblastoma-derived circulating tumor DNA in plasma at initial diagnosis and at recurrence, without relying on prior knowledge of the tumor's mutations.
- Test whether lowering sequencing errors improves detection of solid-tumor DNA variants in blood, capturing more of glioblastoma's genetic diversity.
More about the research
Diagnosis usually requires surgery to remove tissue, since other brain lesions can look the same on scans. Spotting a recurrence is also hard because treatment side effects can mimic tumor growth on images. These brain procedures carry risk and can cause new neurologic problems. A blood test could avoid some of these surgeries.
Why it matters
Patients with glioblastoma now often need risky brain surgery for diagnosis or to confirm the tumor has returned. A blood-based ctDNA test could let doctors diagnose GBM and tell true recurrence from treatment effects without invasive procedures. This could guide treatment decisions earlier and spare patients surgically caused neurologic damage.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David Peters
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Genetics
Develop cell-free DNA methylation analysis of maternal plasma that predicts the clinical trajectory of pregnancies diagnosed with mild or severe preeclampsia.
Abhijit Patel
Yale University, CT·Medicine & Clinical Research
Map the order in which methylation changes in Epstein-Barr virus DNA and host B-cell gene promoters appear in blood before lymphoma is diagnosed, using banked plasma from a long-term cohort of people with HIV.
Hyunsuk Shim
Emory University, GA·Biomedical Engineering
Develop rapid, motion-robust spectroscopic MRI scans of the whole brain that improve image quality for detecting infiltrating brain tumor.
The school
University of Utah: 58 labs on PI Pages, $789M a year on research, 366 research doctorates a year.
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