A key component of the Brain Science Foundation's mission is to generate interest and excitement around the research, diagnosis and treatment of all intracranial tumors with particular emphasis on meningiomas, the most common type of primary brain tumors. The Brain Science Foundation has sponsored several programs at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital designed to expand the number of investigators in the field by supporting researchers in the early stages of their careers as well as seasoned researchers who are working on translational research and/or novel, scientific approaches for which securing funding is often challenging. This support for Fellows and Scholars is to help establish the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Meningioma Center for Excellence as the premier institute for the study and treatment of meningioma with which students and practitioners from around the globe will want to be associated.
Fellows Program:
The Meningioma Center continues to attract first-rate trainees to its program from around the world. Current fellows include: Nathalie Agar, Lata Menon, Seung-Kee Kim, Sandeep Mittal and Hongwei Yang.
Nathalie Y.R. Agar, Ph.D.
A Canadi
an citizen, Dr. Nathalie Agar holds a Ph.D. from Concordia University in Montreal and received her B.Sc. in 1997 from Laval University in Quebec. She was a postdoctoral fellow in Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University, Brain Tumor Research Centre, in Montreal from 2002 through 2005. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Fellowship Project:
Dr. Agar is developing a rapid, accurate, and high-throughput method of characterizing meningiomas at the molecular level at the time of surgery. The method, called Mass Spectrometry Imaging, will provide us information on thousands of proteins from intact meningioma tissue in minutes, and has the potential to revolutionize the care of patients with meningioma.
Lata Menon, Ph.D.
Dr. Lata G 
Menon is from India. She received her Ph.D in Immunology/Cancer Research in 2000, from Mahatma Gandhi University (Amala Cancer Research Centre, Thrissur) in Kerala, India. She has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Chemotherapy Division of Cancer Research Institute, Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai, India. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Allergy/Immunology, North Shore-LIJ University Hospital in Manhasset, New York and later in the Department of Medicine at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey/UMDNJ in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Currently she is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Fellowship Project:
Dr. Menon’s project focuses on the development of new local delivery systems for the treatment of brain tumors, including meningiomas. These studies employ powerful antitumor agents encased in biodegradable polymers which when placed in the surgical cavity will slowly degrade and release the agent into the tumor site, thereby inhibiting tumor growth.
Seung-Kee KimDr. Kim, from Korea, is currently an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery (Pediatric Neurosurgery) at the Seoul National University College of Medicine.
For the past two years, he has been on sabbatical in the Neurosurgical Oncology Laboratory at the Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Fellowship Project:
Dr. Kim is focused on the development of novel local therapy for the treatment of human brain tumors. With Dr. Menon, Dr. Kim is conducting studies that employ powerful anti-tumor agents encased in biodegradable polymers which when placed in the surgical cavity will slowly degrade and release the agent into the tumor site, thereby inhibiting tumor growth.
Sandeep Mittal, M.D.
Undergraduate: Cegep de Saint-Hyacinthe
Medical School: McGill University Faculty of Medicine
Residency: McGill University, Montreal Neurological Institute & Hospital
Fellowship: Epilepsy Surgery, Montreal Neurological Institute & Hospital
Fellowship Project:
In addition to working as a clinical fellow and performing brain disorder related surgeries, Dr. Mittal is the Meningioma Fellow in the Meningioma Center for Excellence. In this capacity, Dr. Mittal is responsible for teaching students and residents about the diagnosis and treatment of meningiomas and other primary brain tumors.
Hongwei Yang
Dr. Yang
is originally from China. He received his M.D. from China Medical University in 1987 as well as his M.MSc in 1990. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1999. From 1990 to 1992, he was a resident of Pediatric Surgery & Oncology, at China Medical University. In 1992, he was appointed a Lecturer of Pediatric Surgery at the China Medical University and that appointment lasted until 1994. From 1993 to 2003, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and currently he is a postdoctoral fellow at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Fellowship Project:
Dr. Hongwei Yang is using a cutting-edge 100k whole genome SNP array to identify genes related to tumorigenesis and progression of meningiomas.
Scholars Program:
The Brain Science Foundation contributes to the work of three senior researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital: Dr. Rona Carroll, Ph.D., of the Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Elizabeth B. Claus, M.D. Ph.D., of the Yale School of Medicine and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Dr. Alexandra Golby, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Rona Carroll, Ph.D., M.D.
Associate
Director, Neurosurgical Oncology Laboratory, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Graduate Education:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.A., 1985
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D., 1987
Postdoctoral Training:
Brigham and Women’s Hospital,
Department of Medicine, 1987-1991
Clinical Interests:
Experimental therapies of brain tumors including local delivery, molecular genetics of brain tumors
Rona Carroll is Associate Director of the Neurosurgical Oncology Laboratory in Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. The Neurosurgical Oncology laboratory engages in a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the basic biology of human brain tumors, and then uses this information to develop new therapeutic strategies. The laboratory provides a unique environment for neurosurgeons, basic scientists, medical students and research fellows to conduct cutting edge scientific studies. More specifically, Dr. Carroll has conducted seminal work on the expression and function of steroid hormone receptors in human meningiomas. This work is now being expanded in collaboration with Drs. Kalamarides and Giovannini in Paris, France. They are working on the development of new animal models of meningiomas and genetic characterization of these tumors by SNP and Affymetrix microarray analysis. Additionally, Dr. Carroll is developing new local deliveries methods for the treatment of brain tumors in collaboration with Dr. Marcelle Machluf, a bioengineer at the Technion University in Haifa, Israel.
Dr. Carroll is also the co-director of the Brain Tissue Bank and Cell Repository for Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital, Boston. The Tumor Bank contains approximately 2,500 human brain tumor specimens, and RNA, and DNA isolated from brain tumors. This bank represents a valuable resource for brain tumor research. Samples are sent to scientists around the world for their studies. he serves as an ad hoc reviewer for Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research and Journal of Neuro-oncology.Her research group has made research presentations around the world including at the European Neuro-oncology meeting in Italy and the Society of Neuro-oncology meeting in Colorado. Dr. Carroll was recently awarded a grant from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation in collaboration with Dr. Marcelle Machluf. Dr. Carroll’s research is also funded by grants from the NIH and the Brain Science Foundation.
Elizabeth B. Claus, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate S
urgeon, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Claus is an associate professor of Epidemiology at Yale University and a biostatistician of the Epidemiology of Cancer NIH study.
Medical Education:
Yale University School of Medicine, 1994
Internship:
Yale-New Haven Hospital, General Surgery, 1996
Fellowship:
Brigham and Women’s Hospital,
Neurosurgical Oncology, 2003
Clinical Interests:
Brain tumors, epidemiology of brain tumors, meningioma, glioma, metastatic brain tumors, metastatic breast cancer.
Dr. Claus’s research interests include the epidemiology of brain tumors as well as the study of outcomes for neurosurgical patients. Over the past year, she has examined whether the extent of surgical resection is an important predictive factor of long-term outcomes among patients diagnosed with low-grade gliomas undergoing surgical resection in the intra-operative MRI suite at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The one-, two-, and five-year death rates for this group of patients (1.9%, 3.6% and 17.6%), respectively, were significantly lower than those reported using national databases, suggesting that the extent of resection is a predictive factor of long-term outcomes for patients.
Dr. Claus is also involved in a multi-dimensional effort to determine the epidemiology of meningioma. Dr. Claus is working to formally and comprehensively examine the environmental, genetic, pathologic and clinical variables associated with meningioma risk for the first time in a large epidemiological study. The study will collect data from five population-based study sites in the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and North Carolina as well as the San Francisco Bay Area and Harris County, Texas. The timing of such a study is advantageous given recent brain tumor registry legislation passed in the United States that requires doctors to report benign tumors as well as malignant tumors to the federal government.
Some of the questions that will be asked include: Are hormones associated with an increased risk in the development of meningioma? Is ionizing radiation associated with an increased risk of meningioma? And what is the quality of life for patients diagnosed with meningioma? Preliminary studies on this topic are in progress at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital with funding from the Brain Science Foundation and Meningioma Mommas, a Colorado-based support group for those diagnosed with meningiomas and their families and friends.
Alexandra J. Golby, M.D.
Associate Surgeon, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Medical Education:
Stanford University School of Medicine, 1995
Internship/Residency:
Stanford University School of Medicine,
Neurosurgery, 2000
Chief Residency:
Brigham and Women’s Hospital and
Children’s Hospital Boston, 2002
Clinical Interests:
Epilepsy, brain tumors, brain mapping
Dr. Golby practices clinical neurosurgery with a focus on the treatment of brain tumors and epilepsy. Her clinical expertise is in the treatment of patients with lesions in the eloquent cortex and the use of functional brain mapping techniques, including awake surgery, to improve neurologic outcome. She practices at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Her contributions to the clinical work of the Neurosurgery Department focus on the translation of Neuroscience techniques in functional brain mapping, particularly functional MRI (fMRI) and Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), to the clinical realm. In particular, she is leading the development and validation of fMRI for the pre-operative evaluation of patients with lesions in motor and language areas of the brain. She is actively involved in collaborations to advance intraoperative navigation systems, incorporate functional imaging into the operating room, and generally facilitate the transition of imaging advances into the operating room. Dr. Golby is working closely with colleagues from Radiology, Anesthesiology, Facilities, Nursing and General Electric on the development of AMIGO (Advanced Multimodality Image-Guided Operating room). This first-of-its-kind image guided surgery suite will enable MR, CT, PET, fluoroscopic and electrophysiologic guidance to be integrated and presented to the surgeon thereby optimizing surgical treatment.
Dr. Golby’s research is presently funded by a K08 grant from NIH as well as grants from the Brain Science Foundation and the Brigham and Women’s Institute for the Neurosciences.
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
Clinical interests include the development of clinical applications for image processing, computer vision and interactive rendering methods. Dr. Kikinis is currently concentrating on developing fully automated segmentation methods and introducing computer graphics into the operating room. He is the author of 125 peer-reviewed articles.
Before joining Brigham & Women's Hospital in 1988, Dr. Kikinis worked as a researcher at the ETH in Zurich and as a resident at the University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland. He received his M.D. from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1982.
Visiting Professors Program
In late 2004 and throughout 2005, the BWH hosted seven professors from internationally recognized institutions to share their research and expertise with BWH staff and trainees. The speakers' program will continue in 2006.
There are one hundred billion neurons in the brain. A stack of one hundred billion pieces of paper would be about 5,000 miles high, the distance from San Francisco to London.