Dr. Mark Souweidane, Professor of Neurological Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine and director of pediatric neurosurgery at both NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, has been invited to present results of his groundbreaking clinical trial for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Dr. Souweidane will present his results on the second day of the meeting, June 3, at McCormick Place in Chicago.
Dr. Souweidane’s clinical trial was designed to investigate the use of convection-enhanced delivery (CED) in children with DIPG, which has a survival time of less than a year from diagnosis and is uniformly fatal. Neither chemotherapy nor surgery is an effective treatment, and radiation provides only a temporary respite before the tumor resurges. Using CED allows a neurosurgeon to deliver drugs directly into the tumor, bypassing the protective blood-brain barrier that blocks most intravenously administered drugs from reaching a brain tumor.
The first 25 patients in the trial were treated between May 2012 and September 2016 at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Kim Kramer and Dr. Ira Dunkel, both of MSK, were co-Principal Investigators in the study. The trial has since re-opened and is currently enrolling patients. (More information about enrollment)
The annual ASCO meeting brings together more than 30,000 oncology professionals to discuss current and potential treatment options, research updates, and other issues related to cancer. The acceptance of Dr. Souweidane’s results for presentation is a testament to the importance of these findings.
More about DIPG, the clinical trial, and the Children's Brain Tumor Project
