Brain Tumors
Pediatric Low-Grade Astrocytoma (PLGA) Program
Program Leadership
Charles Stiles, PhD, a basic scientist, and Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, a pediatric neuro-oncologist, co-direct the Pediatric Low-Grade Astrocytoma Research Program.
Charles Stiles, PhD, is a faculty member in the Department of Cancer Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He is co-leader for the Neuro-Oncology Program at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and serves on the Dana-Farber/Novartis Pharmaceutical joint program in Cancer Drug Discovery. Dr. Stiles is a scientific advisor to multiple federal and private entities that support brain cancer research and is the director of a large NIH grant for training graduate students and postdoctoral scientists in the field of cancer biology. Dr. Stiles has agreed to lend his time and administrative skills to lead this program in pediatric LGAs.
Charles Stiles, PhD, and Mark Kieran, MD, PhD
Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, an associate professor of Pediatrics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital Boston, serves as director of Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Care's Stop and Shop Family Pediatric Brain Tumor Clinic. He is nationally known for caring for children with low-grade gliomas. He oversees all clinical aspects of this program as lead investigator for clinical research.
Key faculty
Clinical research
Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, is the lead investigator for the clinical aspects of our research program. He has a long-standing scientific interest in LGA. Under the auspices of the Gainey Family, Dr. Kieran has initiated preliminary genomics work that contributes to the program in an important way. In collaboration with Todd Golub, MD, associate professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cancer Program of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard, Dr. Kieran is launching a genomics study by analyzing a subset of approximately 100 tumor samples that have been archived over a 20-year period. This preliminary work involves a technology known as "expression profiling" that can identify genes that are mis-regulated (are expressed at abnormal amounts, expressed at the wrong time, or in the wrong place) in LGA relative to normal surrounding tissue.
Scott Pomeroy MD, PhD, director of the Department of Neurology at Children's Hospital Boston, is widely known and held in high regard for his work on pediatric medulloblastomas. Dana-Farber has a long-standing alliance with Children's and, as such, Dr. Pomeroy is a key contributor to Dana-Farber's LGA Program. An important area of focus for Dr. Pomeroy is the problem of low-grade glioma in children, and he has amassed high quality, non-archival clinical samples of the tumor that will be invaluable to the genotyping projects of Dana-Farber's PLGA Program.
Basic research
Rosalind Segal, MD, PhD
Rosalind Segal, MD, PhD, is the lead investigator for basic research conducted within the PLGA Program. Dr. Segal is a developmental neurobiologist at Dana-Farber and a professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on the stem cells that direct formation of the normal brain and the mechanisms whereby extracellular stimuli regulate proliferation, migration and survival of these cells. She hypothesizes that defects in the mechanisms that control the growth and differentiation of normal neural stem cells underlie the malignant phenotype of pediatric brain cancers.
Thomas Look, MD
Thomas Look, MD, contributes in key ways to the basic science aspects of the PLGA Program. Dr. Look's laboratory in the Department of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber creates genetic models of disease in zebrafish. These genetically accessible model organisms have been shown to have similar conserved pathways of development and disease pathogenesis as humans. Zebrafish models of human diseases enable our investigators to pinpoint the key cellular events in tumor development with an eye to the development of therapies that can inhibit those events in patients.
The Institute has committed to hiring a new faculty member and has initiated a worldwide search for an independent researcher who will become part of Dana-Farber's Pediatric Oncology Department. This individual will be dedicated to the field of pediatric neuro-oncology with a focus on cancer biology. He/she will have his/her own laboratory, post-docs and technicians, and will receive a full Harvard Medical School appointment. This investigator will embark upon critical research with a goal of generating findings that will make a profound impact on efforts to better understand how and why LGAs develop.
Technology and translational research
William Hahn, MD, PhD
William Hahn, MD, PhD, is the lead investigator for translational research for the PLGA Program. He is a key contributor to the Center for Cancer Genome Discovery and a key Dana-Farber liaison with the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard through his faculty position there. He is an authority on design and execution of high through-put screens for cancer therapeutics. In addition, Dr. Hahn's lab is a founding member of a consortium dedicated to the production, validation and use of genome-scale RNA interference reagents to gain a better understanding of the genetic changes that lead to cancer.
Levi Garraway, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School who is a member of the Dana-Farber Center for Cancer Genome Discovery and the Broad Institute. Dr. Garraway is spearheading the analysis of archived LGA samples to detect tumor-associated mutations using the OncoMap technique.
Keith L. Ligon, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology of Harvard Medical School and a pediatric neuropathologist at the CHB and BWH. Dr. Ligon's laboratory in the Dana-Farber Center for Molecular Oncologic Pathology conducts research to develop new clinical diagnostics and markers for the LGA program. Dr. Ligon also directs the Dana-Farber Living Tissue Bank Program which is focused on understanding the biology of brain tumor "stem" cells in pediatric patients.
Loren Walensky, MD, PhD
Loren Walensky, MD, PhD, is a faculty member in the Department of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Boston and assistant professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Walensky is the medical director of Dana-Farber's new program in Cancer Chemical Biology, a component of the Institute's technology platform. In this capacity, he integrates new chemical approaches to therapeutic discovery with clinical applications in PLGA treatment.
Andrew Kung, MD, PhD
Andrew Kung, MD, PhD, is the director of Pre-Clinical Imaging and of the Imaging/Structural Biology technology platform at Dana-Farber. He is a faculty member in the Department of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber and assistant professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kung is an expert in translating basic laboratory concepts into clinical trials through the use of in vivo models and molecular imaging. The PLGA program is greatly aided by his expertise.
Nathanael Gray, PhD
Ulricke Eggert, PhD
Ulricke Eggert, PhD, and Nathanael Gray, PhD, hold primary faculty appointments in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. Drs. Eggert and Gray lend their expertise to the PLGA program by synthesizing drugs and compounds that interact with LGA target mutations.
