Abstract #0308

Brain Tumors Disrupt the Resting-State Connectome

Darian Hadjiabadi¹, Leland Pung¹, Jiangyang Zhang², BD Ward³, Woo-Taek Lim¹, Meghana Kalavar², Nitish V Thakor¹, Bharat B Biswal⁴, and Arvind P Pathak^1,2,5

¹Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States, ²Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States, ³Department of Biophysics, The Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States, ⁴Department of Biomedical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, United States, ⁵Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States

Resting-state functional MRI (rsfMRI) has become indispensable for mapping the changes in ‘connectivity’ between brain regions in a range of diseases including brain tumors. However, the complex interplay between abnormal brain tumor vasculature, tumor blood flow, and cancer cell-induced neurovascular uncoupling can confound the interpretation of resting-state connectivity in patients. Therefore, in this preclinical study we quantified brain tumor-induced changes on resting-state connectivity relative to that in healthy brains, followed by histological validation. RsfMRI revealed that brain tumors alter the resting-state connectome, and histology confirmed that this was largely due to cancer cell-induced disruption of the neurovascular unit.

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