Brain Tumor Program
The Brain Tumor Program in the Cure Starts Now Foundation Brain Tumor Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center is a multidisciplinary research program that promotes collaborations between laboratory researchers and physicians to develop treatment strategies for brain tumors. The program is dedicated to understanding the mechanisms that drive brain tumor formation across life, with a particular focus on pediatric cases, including diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas (DIPG), glioblastomas (GBM), medulloblastomas (MB), and ependymomas. The research program is focused on developing effective treatments for these devastating tumors. Our physicians and scientists leverage modern high-throughput genomic and epigenomic sequencing technologies and single-cell omics to identify tumor cells of origin and drivers using patient-derived xenograft models and transgenic animals. We also develop and employ the latest bioinformatics to analyze tumor evolution and recurrence, uncover potential new therapeutic targets, and validate in various model systems. Investigators in this program also develop and evaluate new effective strategies for proton therapy, an advanced form of radiation therapy that precisely targets tumor mass while sparing surrounding healthy tissue, for treating brain tumors in future clinical settings.
Faculty
Q. Richard Lu, PhD − program leader
Frank Lei Huang, PhD
Lai Man Natalie Wu, PhD
Clinicians
Peter de Blank, MD
Trent R. Hummel, MD
Charles Stevenson, MD
Natasha Pillay-Smiley, DO
