Damon Runyon Researchers

Pediatric diffuse midline gliomas (DMG) are incurable brain cancers with no long-term survivors. To date, radiation therapy remains the standard of care but improves survival by only a few months. Despite intense research efforts over the past four decades, there is still a lack of mechanistic understanding of the biology underlying DMG radioresistance. Dr. Lo Cascio is studying how DMG tumors exploit interactions with surrounding normal neurons to survive radiation-induced cell death. While there is ample evidence that communication between neurons and DMG cells is critical to fuel tumor growth, whether this neuron-glioma crosstalk contributes to treatment failure is unknown. Dr. Lo Cascio hopes by pushing the boundaries of our knowledge of the neuron-glioma intercellular dialogue, she can identify resistance mechanisms that can be targeted to sensitize these lethal tumors to radiation therapy. Dr. Lo Cascio received her PhD from Arizona State University, Tempe and her BS from University of Bath, Bath.