Tricia King
Emory University, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Children and young people who survive medulloblastoma, a brain tumor in the cerebellum (the brain region at the back of the head), often face lasting problems with thinking and memory, called cognitive impairment (CI). Their lifesaving chemotherapy and radiation (chemoradiation) can harm the brain.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
Genetics
- Topics
medulloblastoma
pediatric brain tumor
childhood cancer survivorship
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2027
What they work on
- Identify the strongest predictors of cognitive impairment in pediatric, adolescent and young adult medulloblastoma survivors by testing environmental resources, clinical factors and genetic variants separately at cancer centers in Georgia, Alabama and Ohio.
- Build a polygenic risk score with machine learning that weights single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) regulating RNA expression linked to cognitive impairment and includes known epigenetic, transcription and protein effects.
- Create a multi-domain risk algorithm combining the most sensitive clinical, environmental and genetic predictors, to support risk-adapted chemoradiation and early interventions for cognitive impairment.
More about the research
Yet survivors with the same age at treatment, treatment intensity and tumor subtype can have very different outcomes, from mild to severe impairment. This project asks what explains that range. It looks at three areas: genes, a child's environment and medical factors.
Why it matters
A risk algorithm combining genes, environment and treatment factors could help doctors identify which young medulloblastoma survivors are most likely to develop cognitive impairment. This could guide risk-adapted chemoradiation and early interventions to prevent, lessen or manage thinking problems. The aim is better quality of life and daily functioning for childhood cancer survivors.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Eimear Kenny
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Genetics
Develop robust clinical polygenic risk score (PRS) tests and combine them with standard clinical risk factors and family history to generate genomic risk assessments for up to 15 common diseases.
Yanming Li
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Genetics
Identify the aortic cell types in which TAAD-associated SNPs act, by integrating GWAS results with single-cell ATAC-seq maps of accessible chromatin from human aortic tissue.
Kristopher Sarosiek
Harvard University, MA·Pharmacology
Compare at single-cell resolution how radiation determines the fate of neurons, glial cells and blood-vessel endothelial cells in neonatal, juvenile and adult mouse brains, and establish which cell losses drive radiation-induced neurocognitive impairment.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.