University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, United States
I am a Neuropathologist and Professor within the Departments of Neurological Surgery and Pathology at UCSF, an investigator within the Brain Tumor Center, and I direct the UCSF Brain Tumor SPORE Biorepository and Pathology Core. I received my MD and PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 2002, training in Pathology at the University of Washington, and Neuropathology Fellowship and postdoctoral studies at University of California San Francisco. My NIH-funded laboratory is focused on understanding how factors in the brain tumor microenvironment, including the extracellular matrix and immune response, influence tumor progression and therapy resistance. Using a combination of in vivo and ex vivo model systems and primary human biospecimens, these studies are designed to identify novel determinants of gliomagenesis with potential for therapeutic targeting and use as disease biomarkers. As a neuropathologist and director of a clinical laboratory, I also work closely with my clinical and basic science colleagues and am involved in multi-institutional clinical trials with an overall goal of improving care for brain tumor patients.