Researchers of two research papers published in The New England Journal of Medicine have recently reported that doctors can more effectively treat brain tumors by ascertaining their genetic characteristics.

Experts said that findings of the study can help in altering the diagnosis and treatment decisions for thousands of patients.

It could even mark an important advance in so-called precision medicine, in which cancer treatments are customized according to the genetic makeup of the patient's tumors.

Dr. David J. Langer, the chief of neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said, "Prognosis is going to be more accurately delineated by these kinds of genetic subtypes, outstripping the value of looking through a microscope".

It has been said that doctors who have been working to treat other types of cancer, particularly breast cancer, have already established genetic subtypes to help guide treatment.

Langer said that the two new researches are a bigger step in bringing the same approach to brain cancer treatment.

The two research papers focused on gliomas, which account for roughly a third of brain cancer cases. Nearly 23,000 Americans develop a brain tumor each year, and about 14,000 die of one annually, shows data.

Researchers said there are some gliomas that can become aggressive and can kill a person. So far doctors have not had a rigorous way of identifying which tumors will become deadlier before they do so.

Researchers in the two new studies performed several genetic analyses on 1,380 tumors. Both the team found that the tumors could be divided into categories, which could be determined by looking at some genetic glitches. Tumors with one genetic profile were relatively slow growers and responsive to drug treatment, making them good candidates for chemotherapy alone, rather than when combined with radiation.