Dr. Philip Stieg, Dr. Mark Souweidane, Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield, and the researchers of the Children’s Brain Tumor Project are delighted to welcome a new faculty member to our department and senior scientist to our world-class laboratory. Dr. Nadia Dahmane, PhD, who has spent her career studying the relationship between developmental biology and cancer, joins us from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work examines normal brain development, including the processes of cell differentiation and proliferation – which, when unchecked, can lead to pediatric tumor development. We believe that understanding how the central nervous system grows normally can help explain why that growth can sometimes go awry. Dr. Dahmane’s work and expertise will help us open up several new areas of investigation for the CBTP.
Following her work on the “hedgehog” gene and its role in the normally developing brain as well as in the development of medulloblastoma — a pediatric tumor arising in the developing cerebellum — Dr. Dahmane’s current research focuses a group of proteins called transcription factors that regulate how different genes are expressed during both brain development and brain cancer progression. Her laboratory has identified a critical novel transcription factor protein (called RP58) that is indispensable for brain development; its deletion in a mouse model leads to microcephaly, a birth defect affecting the size of the brain. New work from her group investigates how this protein may also be involved in brain tumor development.
Dr. Dahmane holds a B.S. in Biology and an M.S. in Biochemistry/Cell Biology from the University of Rouen, France, and a Ph.D. in Biology of Aging from the University of Paris, France. Her recruitment signals a new era for the Children's Brain Tumor Project, in which a team of world-class scientists and surgeons are working together to defeat pediatric brain tumors.
