Methods of diagnosing proliferative disorders

A method of diagnosing and/or prognosing a glioma in a subject, the method comprising assaying a blood sample or a component thereof of the subject in respect of two or more predesignated cytokines and/or angiogenesis factors selected from prolactin, follistatin, PDGF-BB, PECAM-1, IL-8, IL-10, HGF, angiopoietin, leptin, PDGF-AA, sHER2 neu, sIL-6R alpha, sVEGFR1, G-CSF, and FGF;

• and correlating elevated or reduced levels of each of the two or more cytokines and/or angiogenesis factors, whether relative to a predetermined threshold or relative to each other, with a favorable or unfavorable diagnosis and/or prognosis.

A diagnostic kit for diagnosing and/or prognosing a brain cancer in a subject, comprising a device configured to receive a blood sample or a component thereof from the subject and to assay the blood sample or the component thereof in respect of one or more cytokines and/or angiogenesis factors;

• and a device to correlate or facilitate correlation of the amounts of the one or more cytokines and/or angiogenesis factors within the blood sample or the component thereof with a favorable or unfavorable diagnosis and/or prognosis.

A method of diagnosing and/or prognosing a glioma in a subject, the method comprising performing spectroscopic analysis upon a blood sample or a component thereof of the subject to produce a spectroscopic signature characteristic of the blood sample or the component thereof;

• wherein the spectroscopic analysis is Attenuated Total Reflection FTIR (ATR-FTIR), and wherein ATR crystals support the blood sample during IR analysis;
• wherein the spectroscopically obtained signature is optionally correlated with a favorable or unfavorable diagnosis and/or prognosis based on a predictive model developed by training a database of pre-correlated analyses.