make a donation | subscribe to e-mail list | contact us
The Meningioma Project
Text Resizer Enlarge Text
Brain Science Foundation, Meningioma, Meningiomas, primary brain tumors, The Meningioma Project, Dr. Peter Black, Steven Haley

Research - The Meningioma Consortium Study

EXPLORE:
> Principal Investigators
> The Meningioma Consortium Study
> Publications
> White Papers

Brain Science Foundation Scholar, Dr. Elizabeth B. Claus, Ph.D., MD, Associate Neurosurgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Associate Professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, is leading a national study into the causes of meningioma. As a result of pilot data that Dr. Claus generated from several Brain Science Foundation seed project grants, she leveraged significant external funding to bring local projects to a national level. The $9.5 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be the largest multi-dimensional study to comprehensively examine the environmental, genetic, pathologic and clinical variables associated with meningioma risk.

The development of meningiomas most likely results from a combination of genes acting independently and genes interacting with environmental exposures. The study of both genetic and environmental risk factors remains limited, with most previous studies dating back to the 1980s and including less than 200 participants. In this study, Dr. Claus and her colleagues propose to collect data from 1,520 patients -- 1,000 women and 520 men -- as well as from 1,520 unaffected individuals. The data will be gathered from five population-based study sites in Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, the San Francisco Bay area and Harris County in Texas.

Despite the fact that meningiomas are the most common of all primary brain and central nervous system tumors, limited data is available on long-term outcomes for meningioma patients. The five-year grant from the NIH will also evaluate the quality of life for persons with meningiomas.  Dr. Claus has commented that now is an ideal time to launch a study of meningioma given the recently enacted Benign Brain Tumor Cancer Registries Amendment, which mandates the registration of all brain tumors, both malignant and non-malignant, with U.S. Government Cancer Registries as well as the development of new tools in genetic and molecular epidemiology. 

Additional investigators in the multi-center study include Drs. Joseph Wiemels and Margaret Wrensch, the University of California at San Francisco; Dr. Joellen Schildkraut, Duke University; Dr. Melissa Brody, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; and Dr. Peter Black, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston.