New perspectives in the treatment of adult medulloblastoma in the era of molecular oncology

Medulloblastoma is the most common central nervous system tumor in children, while it is extremely rare in adults. Multimodal treatment involving surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy can improve the prognosis of this disease, and recent advances in molecular biology have allowed the identification of molecular subgroups (WNT, SHH, Groups 3 and 4), each of which have different cytogenetic, mutational and gene expression signatures, demographics, histology and prognosis. The present review focuses on the state of the art for adult medulloblastoma treatment and on novel molecular advances and their future implications in the treatment of this disease. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.