: Tumors of the nervous system are the second most common types of neoplasm in the pediatric population. In contrast to the most common cancer (leukemia), strides have been made in improving outcomes for some nervous system tumors but many remain difficult or impossible to treat effectively. There is opportunity to dramatically improve outcome for nervous system cancer in children through development of new therapies. It is our hypothesis that interactive programs based in developmental biology studying individual nervous system tumor types will identify critical differences and similarities in molecular processes and extend the applicability of new therapies. Animal models and neural stem/progenitor cell models systems are now being used to study nervous system cancers and for preclinical development of novel therapies for nervous system tumors. Whole genome approaches are adding insight into developmental regulation and carcinogenesis. The goal of this proposal is to contribute to development of a multi-disciplinary, world-class Neuro-Oncology focus group within the Cincinnati Children's Hospital aimed at attacking the problem of neural tumors. Taking advantage of our institutional strengths in developmental biology and informatics, this will be accomplished by recruitment of 2 new Tenure Track faculty members. One is a developmental biologist with interest in the hippo signaling pathway and the other a neural tumor focused bioinformatician.
We plan to expand our nascent Neuro-Oncology research program, forming a Core of investigators who generate models and information that will lead to a better understanding the biology of pediatric brain tumors. This knowledge will allow us to develop novel molecularly targeted therapies to improve the prognosis for a vulnerable patient population.
| Ehrman, Lisa A; Nardini, Diana; Ehrman, Sarah et al. (2014) The protein tyrosine phosphatase Shp2 is required for the generation of oligodendrocyte progenitor cells and myelination in the mouse telencephalon. J Neurosci 34:3767-78 |
| Komurov, Kakajan (2012) Modeling community-wide molecular networks of multicellular systems. Bioinformatics 28:694-700 |
