Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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Costas Hadjipanayis

Device for viewing glowing brain tumors

People touched by a brain tumor — patients, their families or friends — may have heard of the drug Gliolan or 5-ALA, which is taken up preferentially by tumor cells and makes them fluorescent. The idea behind it is straightforward: if the neurosurgeon can see the tumor’s boundaries better during surgery, he or she can excise it more thoroughly and accurately.

5-ALA is approved for use in Europe but is still undergoing evaluation by the U.S. FDA. A team at Emory was the first to test this drug in the United States. [Note: A similar approach, based on protease activation of a fluorescent probe, was reported last week in Science Translational Medicine.]

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A hand-held device to detect glowing brain tumors could allow closer access to the critical area than a surgical microscope

Biomedical engineer Shuming Nie and colleagues recently described their development of a hand-held spectroscopic device for viewing fluorescent brain tumors. This presents a contrast with the current tool, a surgical microscope — see figure.

Nie’s team tested their technology on specimens obtained from cancer surgeries. Their paper in Analytical Chemistry reports:

The results indicate that intraoperative spectroscopy is at least 3 orders of magnitude more sensitive than the current surgical microscopes, allowing ultrasensitive detection of as few as 1000 tumor cells. Read more

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer Leave a comment

Emory researchers receive grants to further work in pediatric brain tumor research

Dr. Castellino explains his research on medulloblastomas to participants attending the SBTF’s Grant Award Ceremony.

Two Emory researchers are being recognized by the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation (SBTF) for their work in pediatric brain tumor research.

Tracey-Ann Read, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery, Emory University School of Medicine and director of the Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Laboratory at Emory was awarded a $75,000 grant for her work. She is studying the cell of origin that is responsible for the highly malignant pediatric brain tumor known as an Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumor (AT/RT). She is also developing a mouse model to study this very lethal brain cancer that occurs in early childhood.

Robert Craig Castellino, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Emory and pediatric hematologist/oncologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston received $50,000 to support his research efforts. He is studying how the childhood brain cancer, known as medulloblastoma, can metastasize from the brain to other sites in the body, specifically the spine. Medulloblastoma is the most common pediatric malignant brain tumor.

SBTF board members and researchers who were awarded grants pose following the April ceremony.

Read and Castellino received the awards at the SBTF’s Grant Awards Ceremony in April at Emory University Hospital Midtown. Two other researchers from Duke University were also presented with grant money for their contributions in brain tumor research in adults.

Emory neurosurgeon Costas Hadjipanayis, MD, PhD, is the president of the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation. He says research, from young investigators such as these, is crucial in the race to find a cure for brain tumors. As federal research funding becomes even more difficult to obtain with cuts in funding, private foundation grants, such as from the SBTF, can permit researchers to start important research projects that can provide preliminary data for bigger grant proposals.

The SBTF awards $200,000-300,000 each year to major medical centers throughout the Southeast in support of cutting-edge brain and spinal tumor research.

 

Posted on May 26, 2011 by admin in Cancer Leave a comment

Brain Tumor Foundations Join Together to Raise Awareness and Funds for Research

“Two Voices, One Vision: Sharing Hope Across Generations” is the vision and message this year as two well-known brain tumor foundations join together to raise awareness and money for brain and spinal tumor research and support.

The Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation (SBTF) is joining forces with the Brain Tumor Foundation for Children (BTFC) for the 2011 Race for Research, to be held on July 23 at Atlantic Station in Midtown Atlanta. The joint run and walk will highlight the shared mission of both groups in the fight against brain tumors.

Costas G. Hadjipanayis, MD, PhD

Costas G. Hadjipanayis, MD, PhD

Emory neurosurgeon Costas Hadjipanayis, MD, PhD, is the president of the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation. He says the annual race is the major fundraising event for the SBTF, raising money to support critical, cutting-edge brain and spinal tumor research at major medical centers in the Southeast, including Emory. Over the past decade, the SBTF has raised more than $1.2 million for research.

Since 1983, the BTFC has been serving the pediatric brain tumor population, providing $1.5 million in emergency financial assistance for families over the past 10 years, in addition to providing resources for numerous patient programs and research.

According to Hadjipanayis, the Race for Research has drawn, in recent years, over 2,000 participants annually from throughout the Southeast and across the U.S. By joining forces with the BTFC, attendance is expected to grow, as is the fundraising goal of $300,000 this year for the two not for profit organizations.

Hadjipanayis, who is also chief of the neurosurgery service at Emory University Hospital Midtown, hopes this event will help in gaining greater exposure for brain tumor awareness in both children and adults, while raising funds for important research.

To find out more about the 2011 Race for Research 5K run and 2K walk, visit upport.sbtf.org/2011Race.

Information about the SBTF can be found by visiting www.sbtf.org. For more information about the BTFC, see www.braintumorkids.org.

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Wendy Darling in Uncategorized Leave a comment

First of its kind neurosurgery boot camp held at Emory

Emory’s Department of Neurosurgery recently hosted a two-day boot camp for first-year neurosurgery residents. The unique event was part of a new national course launched by the Society of Neurological Surgeons (SNS) in Atlanta and five other cities including Boston, Portland and Chicago.

The course focused on fundamental skills, patient safety, professionalism and communications. Day one was structured in a traditional lecture format, while day two placed participants in simulated operating room environments and neurosurgical procedures.

A first-year neurosurgery resident participates in the nation's first series of neurosurgery boot camps.

“This boot camp concept is the first of its kind in medicine providing interns with a strong foundation to learn basic concepts and procedures and helping to ultimately reduce the number of errors among training residents,” says Costas Hadjipanayis, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory School of Medicine and chief of neurosurgery service at Emory University Hospital Midtown.

More than 90 percent of all incoming neurosurgery residents in the United States participated in the training at one of the sites. Emory neurosurgical faculty, fellows, and residents led intensive and interactive exercises oriented to fundamental bedside procedural and operative skills.

The exercises were designed to allow residents to familiarize themselves with the basics in an educational and risk-free environment. Skills relevant to all first-year residents were covered, such as line placement and suturing, as well as specific neurosurgical skills like drilling and performing a craniotomy.

According to Hadjipanayis, one of the Emory organizers and course directors, the group of 37 interns participating in the Atlanta training was the largest number nationwide. They were from universities across the region ranging from Virginia to Puerto Rico.

“This was definitely a great start to a course we will cultivate and enhance from year to year,” says Hadjipanayis. “Our goal is for continuous evaluation and improvement.”

Click here to view a CNN news story filmed at the Emory boot camp by CNN medical correspondent and Emory neurosurgeon, Sanjay Gupta, MD.

Posted on August 27, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Stereotactic radiosurgery: fast, friendly, focused

Cynthia Anderson, MD

When Cynthia Anderson, MD, prepares her patients for stereotactic radiosurgery she emphasizes three things: the surgery is fast, friendly and focused. Initially used to treat the part of the brain associated with brain tumors, stereotactic radiosurgery has gained currency as a treatment for various types of cancer. This type of surgery uses x-ray beams instead of scalpels to eliminate tumors of the liver, lung and spine.

“It’s fast because the actual radiation treatment itself is very short,” says Anderson, a radiation oncologist at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. “It’s friendly because it’s all done as an outpatient. And it’s focused because these targeted radiation beams get the maximum dose of radiation to a tumor and give the most minimal dose of radiation to the critical organs that surround the tumor.”

Read more

Posted on March 22, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Strategies to target cancer stem cells

A story in last Friday’s New York Times highlights research on “cancer stem cells”: a fraction of cells in a tumor that are especially resistant to chemotherapy and resemble the body’s non-cancerous stem cells in their ability to renew themselves.

The story describes work by a team at the Broad Institute, who reported in the journal Cell that they had identified compounds that specifically kill cancer stem cells. The hope is that compounds such as these could be combined with conventional treatments to more effectively eliminate cancers.

However, scientists disagree on whether the phenomenon of cancer stem cells extends to different kinds of cancer and what is the best way to target them. Previously not much was known about how to attack these cells.

Work at Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute has been tracking how some biomarkers in cancer cells resemble or differ from those found in stem cells. These markers may help researchers home in on the cancer stem cells.

 

Anticancer therapy must target more than one type of cell. TIC means tumor initiating cell, DTC means differentiated tumor cell, and CPG means cancer progenitor

If "cancer stem cells" play the critical roles some scientists think they do, anticancer therapy must target more than one type of cell. In this figure from Van Meir + Hadjipanayis' review, TIC means tumor initiating cell, DTC means differentiated tumor cell, and CPG means cancer progenitor cells.Â

 

 

In a recent review, Emory brain cancer specialists Erwin Van Meir and Costas Hadjipanayis write:

The “cancer stem cell” hypothesis has invigorated the neuro-oncology field with a breath of fresh thinking that may end up shaking the foundation of old dogmas, such as the widely held belief that glioblastoma tumors are incurable because of infiltrative disease. If the infiltrated cells are in fact differentiated tumor cells, their dissemination beyond the surgical boundary may not be the primary cause of tumor recurrence.

Van Meir, the editor of a new book on brain cancer, adds this comment:

Clearly a lot more work needs to be done to understand the precise cause of glioblastoma recurrence after surgery and chemotherapy and how to prevent it.  The possibility of developing therapeutics that can specifically target the brain cancer stem cells is an exciting new development but will have to proceed with caution to spare normal stem cells in the brain. Developing new imaging tools that can track cancer stem cells in the brain of treated patients is also an important objective and some of the Emory investigators are evaluating the use of nanoparticles to this purpose.

A new faculty member at Winship, Tracy-Ann Read, recently published her research on a molecule that could be used to identify “tumor-propagating cells” in medulloblastoma, a form of brain cancer. She says:

Although cancer stem cells have been identified in many different types of cancer, it is becoming increasingly clear that the properties of these cells may vary greatly among the different tumor types. It is unlikely that one  therapeutic agent will be able to target the cancer stem cells in for example all types brain tumors. Hence  much work still needs to be done in terms of analyzing the properties of these cells in each tumor type and identifying the genes that are responsible for their unique ability to propagate the tumors. 

Winship’s director Brian Leyland-Jones has also reported at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium that molecules that distinguish a hard-to-treat form of breast cancer resemble those that maintain stem cells.

Nice round-up from Nature’s stem cell blog editor Monya Baker

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer Leave a comment