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| Dr. Peter M. Black is a BSF Trustee and its medical advisor. |
Under The Meningioma Project, the Brain Science Foundation will fund the research of a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital dedicated to advancing the understanding of and treatment for meningiomas as well as improving the quality of life for meningioma patients.
The overarching goal of the BSF’s research initiative is to expedite the translation of scientific findings to the clinical environment. Specifically, the BSF will continue to drive new directions for current meningioma research projects that have already yielded promising treatments. In fact, successful findings from some these projects have been leveraged to apply for and in some cases, secure, additional funding on a national scale.
The BSF will also seed exciting new research initiatives, some of which will involve cutting-edge technologies such as RNAi and mass spectrometry, as well as support powerful collaborations between BWH and other world-leading institutions. The following are among the multiple projects currently funded by the BSF.
Analysis of Meningioma Initiation and Progression
Principal Investigator:
Rona Carroll, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Director, Neurosurgical Oncology Laboratory, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Very little is known about the genetic events responsible for initiating meningiomas or, at times, their malignant progression. Dr. Carroll and her team are working to identify these genetic alterations in both benign meningiomas and those that have transformed into malignant tumors to increase understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in meningioma pathogenesis.
With BSF funding, Dr. Carroll’s powerful collaboration with Dr. Marco Giovannini (a world expert in the development of mouse models for benign tumors and Dr. Carroll’s partner in the development of mouse models for meningiomas. Click here for more in the Research Accomplishments section) takes a new direction - to use single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis to identify and validate in biological models the genomic alterations underlying progression and malignant transformation of human meningioma.
The candidate genes identified in Dr. Carroll’s study will facilitate the identification of novel diagnostic and prognostic markers for meningioma, which will guide the development of new therapeutic strategies.
Intracranial Delivery of PLGA Microparticles
Principal Investigator:
Rona Carroll, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Director, Neurosurgical Oncology Laboratory, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Meningiomas can reoccur after surgery or radiation. The recurrence rate depends upon the completeness of the removal, where the tumor is located, and the tumor’s aggressiveness. The goal of this project is to develop polymeric microspheres as a local delivery system for therapeutic agents for recurrent meningiomas. Biodegradable microspheres represent an evolving technology for delivery of drugs to the central nervous system. The microparticles are made of poly (lactide-co-glycolide), which has been shown to be safe and promising for drug delivery into the brain because they are biodegradable and biocompatible with brain tissue. Due to their size, these microspheres can be easily implanted into discrete areas of the brain without causing damage to the surrounding tissue. This targeted local therapy will increase tumor treatment response and ultimately improve patient outcome. This work is being done in collaboration with Dr. Marcelle Machluf at the Technion University in Haifa, Israel.
MRI Imaging
Principal Investigator:
Ron Kikinis, M.D., Director of the Surgical Planning Laboratory of the Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School.Director of the Surgical Planning Laboratory of the Department of Radiology of the Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School
Meningioma patients regularly undergo Magnetic Resonance (MR) scans, resulting in a series of scans showing the development of the meningioma over a period of time. Clinicians analyze the series of these scans to detect tumor growth. This analysis, however, is time-consuming and difficult as clinicians have to consider a variety of factors. The goal of Dr. Kikinis’s project is to develop a tool that automatically determines the growth of meningiomas.
Dr. Kikinis’s current tool performs several steps to detect the growth of meningioma in a patient. It first aligns each scan to a common reference to account for differences in head positions across the time series. It then removes common MR artifacts from the images, such as noise. Furthermore, it outlines and measures the meningioma in each scan, and compares the volume of meningioma across the scans.
Genome-wide Search for Meningioma Genes
Principal Investigator:
Elizabeth B. Claus, Ph.D., M.D., Associate Surgeon, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Instructor of Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School; Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Yale University
With the support of BSF funding, Dr. Claus and her team will start to approach study subjects this winter as part of the Meningioma Consortium Study. Additionally, the team is relying on BSF funding to facilitate its efforts to obtain additional genetic pilot data on Massachusetts study subjects over the next several years. Once that new genetic pilot data is obtained, Dr. Claus and her colleagues plan to submit a request for funds from the NIH to collect data from all of the subjects in its Consortium study.
