Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/15/2024
9:00 am - 9:50 am
Category(ies)
Joel Garbow, PhD
Professor of Radiology, Associate Director, Biomedical MR Center, Washington University in St. Louis
Date: Friday, November 15, 2024
Time: 9-9:50 a.m.
Location: SCOB 210
Faculty host: Scott Beeman
Abstract: Conventional treatment for high-grade glioblastoma (GBM) brain tumor includes surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Radiation necrosis (RN) is a frequent late time-to-onset injury that occurs in and around a radiotherapy treatment field. Current standard-of-care 1H neuro-MRI fails to reliably distinguish RN alone from mixed, recurrent brain tumor/RN post treatment of the primary tumor, an important unmet clinical need. We have developed a Gamma-Knife-enabled mouse model (focal hemispheric irradiation) of pure RN that recapitulates all its clinical features. We are employing this model as a platform for the development and validation of imaging biomarkers and the identification and testing of potential new therapies. We have also developed mixed RN/GBM mouse models that demonstrate many of the clinical features of recurrent glioblastoma. These models involve implantation of tumor cells in previously irradiated brain tissue, in which tumors grow more aggressively and invasively than those in non-irradiated brain. Tumors that are responsive to immunotherapy lose that responsiveness when growing in previously irradiated brain. This talk will describe our animal models of pure RN and mixed RN/GBM, discuss efforts to develop 1H imaging methods to distinguish pure RN from mixed recurrent brain tumor/RN, and demonstrate the use Deuterium Metabolic Imaging (DMI) for characterizing tumor growth, discriminating recurrent tumor from treatment effects, and providing insights into the loss of tumor responsiveness to immunotherapy.
Biosketch: Joel R. Garbow, PhD, is Professor in Radiology and is the Associate Director of Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology’s Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Center (BMRC). With more than 45 years of experience in magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy, Garbow is well-recognized and respected for his work in magnetic resonance as applied to intact biological systems. Garbow received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, working in the laboratory of Professor Alexander Pines. Before joining Washington University, he spent more than 15 years at Monsanto Company, rising to the rank of Science Fellow and head of Monsanto’s MR laboratories. As a PI within the BMRC, Garbow’s research interests include the development and application of novel MR methodologies for the study of cancer and radiation-induced brain injury in pre-clinical, small-animal models and the use of innovative MRS and MRI methods to quantify placental function and competence.