Aflac Cancer & Blood Disorders Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Department of Pediatrics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
Atlanta, United States
Tobey J. MacDonald, MD is Director and Aflac Chair of Pediatric Neuro-Oncology, Emory University School of Medicine. After obtaining my medical degree from Cornell University, I received comprehensive training in pediatrics followed by fellowships in pediatric hematology-oncology and neuro-oncology all at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. I was then Director of Neuro-Oncology at Children’s National Medical Center (1998-2009) and now lead the Neuro-Oncology Program of the Aflac Cancer Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (2009-present). As Director, I have served as site PI for over 75 national pediatric brain tumor clinical trials. I have also established a career as a physician-scientist leader in basic and clinical-translational research of childhood brain tumors. My research focuses on developing novel strategies for treating brain tumors. Specifically, our molecular studies (genomic, proteomic, metabolomic) of patient-derived specimens have identified PDGFR-RAS/MAPK and the STAT3-Hif1a pathways as potential therapeutic targets for preventing medulloblastoma formation, metastasis and treatment-resistance. We perform preclinical validation of drugs and the targets using genetic mouse models and patient-derived xenografts of medulloblastoma. My work has directly resulted in three major investigator- initiated clinical trials, 2 national (PBTC and COG) Phase I/II studies of the integrin antagonist cilengitide, and currently the STAT3-Hif1a inhibitor, WP1066. Since joining Emory, I have established research collaborations with multi-disciplinary scientists in neurosurgery, biomedical engineering, cancer immunology, neuroimaging, neuropsychology, and bioinformatics among faculty of Emory, Georgia Tech, Augusta and GA State University. More recently I have new collaborative projects in nanoparticle drug delivery across the blood-brain-barrier and genetic predictors of long-term outcomes of pediatric brain tumor survivors.