Genetic Alterations and Molecular Markers of Brain Tumors

Stephen Hunter is a diagnostic neuropathologist with an interest in developing new markers for brain tumors. He analyzed p53 mutations in astrocytomas using the large collection of specimens archived in the Dept of Pathology. More recently in collaboration with Daniel Brat and Jeffrey Olson, he used microarray analysis to uncover apolipoprotein D as a specific marker for pilocytic astrocytoma. He confirmed these findings using immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization on formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue sections. He is currently building a collection of brain tumor tissue microarrays which will significantly reduce the time, effort and cost required for the validation of future markers by in situ hybridization and immunoperoxidase studies for BTP members.

Nelson Oyesiku is a neurosurgeon scientist whose clinical activity is the surgical treatment of pituitary tumors and basic research focus is the molecular biology of pituitary tumors. He has recently shown that clinically non-functioning adenomas overexpress the folate receptor and the c-mer proto-oncogene is a specific marker for corticotroph (ACTH-) adenomas. The first finding is being exploited for its application to new tumor-targeted therapies and imaging (see objective 4). He is further characterizing the proteome in pituitary macroadenomas by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, mass spectrometry, and bioinformatics with collaborators at the University of Tennessee.

Erwin Van Meir is a molecular and tumor biologist whose research program has focused for the last 15 years on the biology and genetics of human gliomas and the development of new therapeutic approaches for cancer. He is currently developing new biomarkers for malignant brain tumors through the proteomic analysis of patient cerebrospinal fluid. These markers will help better detect, follow-up and predict outcome. These biomarkers are also candidate therapeutic targets as they may be actively involved in disease progression.