Nothing is more frightening than to learn that your child has a brain tumor. These serious tumors are unfortunately all too common; in fact, malignant brain tumors are the most frequent type of solid cancer seen in childhood. To make matters more difficult, conventional radiation therapy – a mainstay of treatment for adults – cannot …
October 15th, 2007 was a day my husband and I will never forget. I had run my first marathon the day before and was on a high. Ben was having a MRI done on his brain. Nothing to worry about we had been told by my doctor, “it will be fine.” Little did we know how …
The Daily Review, Morgan City, Louisiana By GEOFFREY STOUTE The family of a 4-year-old Morgan City girl who died last November from an inoperable brain tumor donated $25,000 Saturday to the Childhood Brain Tumor Foundation. The family of Ali Aucoin gathered at the young girl’s Morgan City home where her parents, Jarrod Aucoin and Spring …
Javad Nazarian, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, Children’s National Medical Center, Center for Genetic Medicine The focus of my science career changed almost three years ago when a physician colleague approached me and proposed a potentially challenging project: molecular analysis of pediatric brainstem gliomas (BSGs). The project deemed challenging because of the lack of fresh frozen …
Low-grade gliomas are the most common brain tumor in children. Although some patients can be effectively cured with surgery alone, recurrences are common in a significant majority of patients—especially those without neurofibromatosis type I (NF1). These patients often require repeated resections, chemotherapy and often radiation therapy. The damage caused by these therapies has a significant …
Ricky Knight was a healthy, athletic intelligent 11-year-old who was exceling in school and sports when he was diagnosed with what would be identified as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) in his right parietal lobe. He had several severe headaches in December and January and then a seizure on April 27, 2007 which landed him in Johns …
Partial sponsorship-funding of a professional meeting for ATRT The Childhood Brain Tumor was a partial sponsor for this important meeting that was held March 9-10, 2009 at the Fairmont Copley Hotel in Boston. Susan Chi, M.D., Mark Kieran, M.D., Ph.D. and Charles Roberts, Ph.D. from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute organized the meeting. Experts in the field …
We began noticing tiny things at first that something was not right with our then 3-year-old daughter. Ali appeared to have trouble focusing her eyes, her balance was off, and she became clumsy. After a couple incidents of falling and hurting herself, we took her to Teche Regional Medical Center in our hometown of Morgan …
Dr. Jack Su, Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, Texas Children’s Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine When I first chose pediatric oncology for my fellowship, invariably I was asked the question “Why would you want to take care of children with cancer?” Now that my career has evolved to working with children with brain tumors, I am still …
