Pediatric Low-Grade Glioma Program Leadership
Mimi Bandopadhyay, MBBS, PhD
Pratiti (Mimi) Bandopadhayay, MBBS, PhD
Mimi Bandopadhayay, MBBS, PhD is the Director of the PLGG Program at Dana-Farber. She is a pediatric neuro-oncologist and scientist within the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at HMS, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT. Mimi applies integrative genomic approaches to identify targetable drivers of pediatric brain tumors and characterize resistance mechanisms. In addition to her efforts in the lab, Mimi is a member of the clinical pediatric neuro-oncology team at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s, contributing to the care of children with brain tumors.
Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD
Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD is an Executive Committee member of Dana-Farber’s PLGG Program. He is a Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. Dr. Beroukhim is a neuro-oncologist and directs a scientific research laboratory that seeks to understand how brain tumors grow and progress, and novel ways to target these tumors. He also develops artificial intelligence-based approaches to understand brain tumor biology.
Michael Eck, MD, PhD
Michael Eck, MD, PhD is an Executive Committee member of Dana-Farber’s PLGG Program. His scientific research laboratory studies proteins that are commonly found in pediatric brain cancers to grow, in particular BRAF and FGFR. Specifically, they seek to develop novel, mutant-selective therapeutics targeting oncogenic kinases, including BRAF alterations in pediatric low-grade gliomas and other cancers.
Kimberly Stegmaier, MD
Kimberley Stegmaier, MD is is an Executive Committee member of Dana-Farber’s PLGG Program. She is the Chair of the Department of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber, a professor of Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School, an attending physician at the Boston Children’s Hospital and Dana-Farber, and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She was previously the co-director of the Pediatric Hematological Malignancies Program at Dana-Farber and Boston Children’s.
Brittany C. Parker Kerrigan, Ph.D.
Brittany C. Parker Kerrigan, PhD
Brittany C. Parker Kerrigan, PhD serves as the Director of Strategic Operations for the Dana-Farber PLGG Program, as well as the Scientific Director for the international Pediatric Low-Grade Glioma Coalition.
Pediatric Low-Grade Glioma Program Researchers
Mimi Bandopadhyay, MBBS, PhD
Pratiti (Mimi) Bandopadhayay, MBBS, PhD, is a pediatric neuro-oncologist and scientist within the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She completed her medical studies at Monash University and received her PhD at the University of Melbourne. She trained in pediatrics and hematology/oncology at the Royal Children’s Hospital and Monash Medical Center, Melbourne, and the Australasian College of Physicians, followed by further training in pediatric neuro-oncology at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and the Broad Institute. Mimi is a member of the clinical pediatric neuro-oncology team in the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.
Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD
Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. In addition to directing a genomics-focused lab, he sees patients in an adult neuro-oncology clinic. Rameen studied physics and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He obtained an MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge for work done at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Medical Biology on electron crystallographic studies of ion channels. He then completed his MD and internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco, before completing a medical oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Michael Eck, MD, PhD
Michael Eck, MD, PhD is Harvard Medical School Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology. He received his MD and PhD in biochemistry from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and completed postdoctoral training in structural biology at the Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the structure and regulation of tyrosine kinases in cancer and on structure-based approaches to discovery of novel inhibitors.
Keith Ligon, MD, PhD
Keith Ligon, MD, PhD is Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School with joint appointments at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). He is the Chief of Neuropathology at BWH/DFCI and the Director of the Center for Patient Derived Models (CPDM) at DFCI. He attended medical school and received his PhD at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Several of the methods he has developed in his research have been implemented in the clinical pathology lab to improve patient diagnosis. He has also led efforts to train neuropathologists in the utilization of genomic tests in practice and led genomically informed clinical trials development at the local and national consortium levels.
Sarah Buhrlage, PhD
Sara Buhrlage, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Harvard Medical School Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology. She received her PhD in chemistry from the University of Michigan. Following a post-doctoral position at Broad Institute, she joined DFCI’s medicinal chemistry core group where she collaborated with cancer biologists and clinicians to pharmacologically validate novel targets of disease in vitro and in vivo and to study mechanisms of disease and drug resistance. She subsequently joined the faculty of the Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology where she pursues novel strategies for challenging drug targets.
Eric Fischer, PhD
Eric Fischer, Ph.D. is Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology. He is Co-Director of the Center for Protein Degradation. Dr. Fischer trained in structural biology and biochemistry at the University of Basel and conducted his doctorate studies at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research. His lab focuses on the understanding of fundamental processes in ubiquitin signaling, and the molecular basis of ubiquitin ligase activity, targeting and regulation. He seeks to leverage this understanding for the development of novel therapeutic approaches, such as targeted protein degradation.
Nika N. Danial, PhD
Nika Danial, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Cancer Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She is Co-Director of the NCI-funded T32 Training Program in Cancer Chemical Biology and Metabolism at Dana-Farber. She received her PhD from Columbia University and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Dana-Farber, where she studied mitochondrial apoptosis and identified a novel role for the BCL-2 family protein BAD in glucose metabolism. Her lab focuses on mechanisms and consequences of metabolic fuel choice in health and disease.
William Sellers, M.D.
William Sellers, M.D. is a Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School, and directs Broad Institute’s Cancer Program. His work has focused on cancer biology and genomics, including major contributions to early cancer genome research. Previously, he was VP and Global Head of Oncology at Novartis, where he led oncology drug discovery across multiple platforms. Sellers earned a biology degree from Georgetown and an M.D. from UMass Medical School.
Volker Hovestadt, Ph.D.
Volker Hovestadt, Ph.D. is a computational biologist, cancer researcher, and principal investigator of the Hovestadt lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His main research interest is the genomic characterization of childhood brain tumors and leukemias, with the goal to better understand their developmental origins and tumor driving mechanisms. Volker studied Biochemistry and Systems Biology at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and performed his PhD research at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany.
Rosalind A. Segal, MD, PhD
Rosalind Segal, MD, PhD is Harvard Medical School Professor of Neurobiology and Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology. She is HMS Dean for Graduate Education. She received her PhD from Rockefeller University and her MD from Cornell University Medical College, followed by a residency in the Harvard Neurology Program. As a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she investigated the role of nerve growth factors in regulating cerebellar development and tumor formation. At Dana-Farber her research is principally focused on nervous system development.
