Pediatric Brain Tumors

Research

Mayo Clinic is a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, giving patients access to new developments and treatments for brain tumors. Mayo Clinic Cancer Center is one of only four cancer centers to receive a National Cancer Institute-sponsored Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant for brain cancer research. The intent of the $10.8 million Mayo Clinic Brain SPORE is to implement a strong collaboration between basic scientists and clinicians, to foster meaningful studies of brain cancer.

Several programs within pediatric hematology and oncology research at Mayo Clinic are working to better understand how and why pediatric brain tumors develop and how to best intercept their growth. The biological basis of pediatric brain tumor is very different from adult brain tumors and research is actively going on at Mayo and elsewhere to further determine what genetic pathways are dysregulated in pediatric brain tumors.

The Neuro-oncology Research Program at Mayo Clinic is targeting four tumor types: astrocytoma, oligodendroglioma, medulloblastoma, and primary central nervous system lymphoma.

Medulloblastomas, the most commonly occurring pediatric brain tumors, are a primary focus of research at Mayo. Researchers are investigating:

• What cells medulloblastomas originate from
• What tumor suppressor or other genes may be mutating to allow for their development
• How normal nerve cells, in addition to tumor cells, receive their instructions to multiply or die

Mayo researchers have recently identified two gene mutations responsible for about 15 percent of medulloblastomas.

Publications

See a list of publications by Mayo doctors on pediatric brain tumors on PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine.