Jonathan L. Finlay, MB ChB, FRCP (Lond.), FRCPCH, Director, Neuro-oncology Program; Elizabeth and Richard Germain Endowed Professor of Pediatric Cancer, Division of Peduiatric Hematology, Oncology and Blood & Marrow Transplant, Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Professor of Pediatrics and Radiation Oncology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA The family of tumors known as germ cell tumors …
John Y.H. Kim, MD, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX Pediatrics became the focus of my clinical interests because of its intrinsic orientation toward developmental issues. I have since had the great fortune of serving children and their families who have charged me with my life’s work. No group of patients and families appeared to …
Tobey J. MacDonald, M.D. For over 50 years, the field of cancer therapy has been dominated by the concept that the tumor must be the selected target of the chemotherapy delivered. Therefore, any drug with the ability to directly kill tumor cells in the laboratory was by definition a candidate for use as chemotherapy in …
Brendan Price, Department of Radiation Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Pediatric high-grade gliomas (pHGG) have few treatment options and most children diagnosed only survive for 1-2 years. Identifying new treatments is therefore of the highest priority. Work in the lab is focused on understanding how these brain tumors arise, with the …
Hillary Bennett and Catherine M. Mannix, RN, BSN, OCN The diagnosis of a brain tumor is never welcome news for anyone. But this type of cancer is especially problematic in children, as their developing nervous systems are particularly sensitive to the effects of radiation, a major form of treatment for brain and other solid pediatric …
Introduction I will divide advances in surgical technique over the past several decades into 4 major categories: greater visual magnification, improved aids to navigation, better functional brain mapping, and more precise tumor destruction. Magnification The operating neurosurgical microscope has been used since the 1950’s when Dr. RMP Donaghy of the University of Vermont was active …
Barry M. Shmookler, MD The first crucial step in cancer management is to assure that the pathology diagnosis (the biopsy) is correct and accurate. What is the basis for this statement? A pathologist is the only physician who can make the actual diagnosis of cancer. He/she is a medical doctor with a specialty training in the …
Recent Developments Gilbert Vezina, M.D., Director of Neuroradiology – Children’s National Medical Center, Washington D.C. Imaging techniques to diagnose, stage, and follow patients with brain tumors are central to their clinical management. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the most commonly utilized technique for lesion detection, definition of extent, detection of spread and in evaluation of …
Marius Wernig, M.D., Ph.D. Stanford University School of Medicine The lysine 27 to methionine substitution in histone variant H3.3 (H3.3-K27M) is the most common mutation in pediatric high grade gliomas. Recent studies have demonstrated that this mutation leads to a global reduction of H3K27 trimethylation in a dominant manner by sequestering an enzymatic subunit of …
