$150K to Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital for medulloblastoma research

Dr. Tamra Werbowetski-Ogilvie is taking a novel approach to understand drug resistance in medulloblastoma, a childhood brain tumor. The project is titled, “Targeting alternative splicing events in medulloblastoma metastasis,” and it will explore a largely unstudied mechanism in this rather destructive childhood cancer. While there is some evidence that metastatic medulloblastomas exhibit distinct genetic features compared to their primary tumors, most studies have focused on genomic changes and gene expression, but do not consider regulatory mechanisms beyond transcription. Alternative splicing refers to post-transcriptional events, and this has never been explored in medulloblastoma metastasis. Dr. Werbowetski-Ogilvie and her team aim to fill this critical knowledge gap, potentially uncovering new ways to halt tumor progression and metastasis.