Section: New Results

Meningioma growth dynamics assessed by radiocarbon retrospective birth dating

It is not known how long it takes from the initial neoplastic transformation of a cell to the detection of a tumor, which would be valuable for understanding tumor growth dynamics. We have assessed the age and growth dynamics in patients with WHO grade I meningiomas by combining retrospective birth-dating of cells by analyzing incorporation of nuclear-bomb-test-derived 14C, analysis of cell proliferation, cell density, MRI imaging and mathematical modeling. We provide an integrated model of the growth dynamics of benign meningiomas. The mean age of WHO grade I meningiomas was 22.1$\pm$ 6.5 years. We conclude that WHO grade I meningiomas are very slowly growing brain tumors, which are resected in average two decades after time of origination. [18]