First National Effort to Study Brain Tumors Under Way at Brigham and Women’s Hospital
NIH-Funded Research to Examine Genetic and Environmental Risk Factors and Quality of Life Issues for Patients
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Dr. Elizabeth B. Claus and Dr. Peter M. Black
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Boston, MA - Brigham and Women’s Hospital neurosurgeons have recently launched two groundbreaking brain tumor studies, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), consisting of an unprecedented collaboration of researchers hoping to uncover important information on the environmental, genetic, pathologic and clinical variables associated with the development of primary brain tumors. Dr. Elizabeth B. Claus and Dr. Peter M. Black have been awarded $9.5 million from the NIH to lead a five-year grant that will represent the first large-scale national effort to study risk factors and quality of life for meningioma.
The Meningioma Consortium Study will include approximately 1,600 persons with a new meningioma diagnosis and 1,600 persons without such a diagnosis from five population-based study sites in the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and North Carolina as well as the San Francisco Bay Area and Harris County, Texas, and will examine risk factors associated with a diagnosis of meningioma, the most frequently reported of primary intra-cranial neoplasms. “At present, the two factors for which the strongest evidence exists with respect to an association with meningioma risk are hormones and radiation exposure,” says Claus. “However, even these factors remain largely unexplored.”
Drs. Claus and Black are also collaborating with members of Gliogene (Genes for Glioma study), an international consortium of researchers that has as its goal the identification of genes associated with the development of primary brain tumors called gliomas. In this study, thousands of patients with glioma will be screened in an effort to identify families with two or more relatives with a brain tumor.
“As the number of families with such a diagnosis is rare, a collaboration of this sort is absolutely essential to the success of such a project,” says Black.
Additional investigators for these projects include Melissa Bondy, Ph.D. at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Joseph Wiemels, Ph.D. and Margaret Wrensch, Ph.D. of the University of California at San Francisco, and Joellen Schildkraut, Ph.D. at Duke University.
For more information, contact Tammy Gilson-Hodge at (617) 525-8395 orTgilson-Hodge@partners.org.
Or contact BWH Media Relations at (617) 534-1600 or BWHMediaRelations@partners.org.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) is a 747-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare System, an integrated health care delivery network. BWH is committed to excellence in patient care with expertise in virtually every specialty of medicine and surgery. The BWH medical preeminence dates back to 1832, and today that rich history in clinical care is coupled with its national leadership in quality improvement and patient safety initiatives and its dedication to educating and training the next generation of health care professionals. Through investigation and discovery conducted at its Biomedical Research Institute (BRI), BWH is an international leader in basic, clinical and translational research on human diseases, involving more than 800 physician-investigators and renowned biomedical scientists and faculty supported by more than $400M in funding. BWH is also home to major landmark epidemiologic population studies, including the Nurses' and Physicians' Health Studies and the Women's Health Initiative. For more information about BWH, please visit www.brighamandwomens.org.
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