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Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) is one of the most devastating of all childhood cancers, with survival times of a little more than a year. DIPG is a type of central nervous system cancer that is located in the pons section of the brain. The pons controls breathing and swallowing, as well as movement in the face and head, and arms and legs. DIPG tumors cannot be removed because they lack an identifiable border, and they take over a location in the brain necessary for survival.

DIPG is a very rare childhood cancer and primarily affects children between 3-10 years old. The cancer is treated aggressively with radiationĀ but in the last 30 years, no other treatments have been shown to extend a child's life beyond 1 to 2 years. Diagnosed by unique characteristics that appear on MRI, until recently there was very little DIPG tissue available for researchers to study. Thanks to new autopsy processes, in recent years researchers have begun to study DIPG tissue and in doing so have found that a specific gene mutation is present in about 70% of DIPG tumors.

Eric Raabe, MD, PhD assistant professor of pediatric oncology at Johns Hopkins University, hypothesizes that this mutation is necessary for the initial formation of the tumor but is not necessary for its continued growth. He wants to understand how this founder mutation leads normal neural stem cells (the cells that develop into the body's nervous system) to develop abnormally, how this abnormal growth then leads to the formation of a DIPG tumor, and what role, if any, the initial mutation plays in the continued growth of the tumor.

To conduct his research, Dr. Raabe will first place the mutation into healthy neural stem cellsĀ in the laboratory and watch them to see how this mutation affects the other genes in the cell. He will also determine if having this mutant gene alters the cells' ability to grow into more mature cells. Then, Dr. Raabe will take these mutant cells and place them into mice. The mice will be watched as they develop DIPG to determine how the core mutation changes how the tumor forms, and continues to grow.

Dr. Raabe hopes that his research will lead to an understanding of what causes DIPG to form, and what allows DIPG to continue growing. If these are known, researchers could begin testing medications against the mutations in the laboratory to see what might prove effective in patients. But as of now they have found there is no cure for DIPG just delaying some of its symptoms for about two years at the most.

 

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