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Purpose: In a prior study of anaplastic oligodendrogliomas treated with chemotherapy at diagnosis or at recurrence after radiotherapy, allelic loss of chromosome 1p correlated with better chemotherapeutic response and overall survival. However, in this group of patients in whom therapeutic management was not uniform, loss of 1p did not identify all chemosensitive tumors, nor did all patients whose tumors harbor a 1p loss have long survival.

Experimental Design: To clarify the clinical relevance of molecular genetic testing at the time of diagnosis for patients with anaplastic oligodendrogliomas, we studied a larger, more homogeneous group of 50 patients with histologically defined anaplastic oligodendrogliomas treated with a chemotherapeutic regimen as the principal initial therapy.

Results: We demonstrate that these tumors can be divided genetically into four therapeutically and …