Brain Tumor Research

Gray Lab

The Gray Laboratory develops first-in-class chemical probes that are used to gain new biological insights into cellular processes that drive cancer and other diseases, and to pharmacologically validate potential clinically relevant targets.

Bertozzi Group

The Bertozzi lab focuses on creating new platform technologies, as well as applying chemical approaches to study systems that elude more conventional methods of biological inquiry. Examples of technologies that drive our research are bioorthogonal chemistries, site-specific protein modification methods, and synthetic glycopolymers that emulate cell-surface glycoproteins.

Clinical Neuro-Oncology Laboratory
Steven D. Chang & David J. Park

Our Lab investigates the outcomes of patients affected with brain, skull base and spine tumors. The goal of the laboratory is to improve patients’ care and outcome by analyzing clinical data from thousands of patients treated at our institution, with surgery as well as with other innovative treatments, such as stereotactic radiosurgery.

Chang Lab

We seek to understand the role in disease played by a class of genes called long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), which are pervasive in the human genome yet have limited or no protein-coding potential. Our team invents new technologies for genome-wide analyses to tackle the vastness of the noncoding genome with greater comprehensiveness and precision than was previously possible. Our lab discovered that long noncoding RNAs have diverse modes of action when it comes to gene control and are key contributors to some human diseases such as cancer. We are now focused particularly on the interplay of regulatory RNAs and chromatin, seeking out new archetypes of regulatory RNAs and novel mechanisms for gene regulation.

More recently, we are studying one of the major drivers of tumour evolution, extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA), whic are small circular DNA particles that cells employ to rapidly change their genomes and can drive adaptive evolution in diverse organisms. Although ecDNA was first observed in cancer in 1965, we are only now appreciating its presence in around a third of cancers and the extent to which it drives tumour evolution, promoting aggressive tumour behaviour and poorer patient survival. 

Bondy Lab

The Melissa Bondy Lab has a comprehensive research focus along the continuum of cancer prevention and population sciences. Research in the lab focuses on the molecular and genetic epidemiology of nearly all cancers, including breast, brain, colon, esophageal, pancreas, lung, pediatric, ovarian and prostate, and tobacco-related cancers. 

Bendall Lab

Our goal is to understand the mechanisms regulating the development of human systems (both embryonic and adult). In particular, we are interested in clarifying the roles of both protein coding genes as well as pathobiology (disease state or pathogen) known to be uniquely human – therefore, not analogously studied in model organisms.

Satpathy Lab

The Satpathy Lab is focused on developing and applying novel genome-scale technologies to study fundamental principles of the immune system in health, infection, and cancer.

Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine

Stanford has been a leader in stem cell research for the past three decades. In 2001, Stanford University School of Medicine unveiled a plan to create five new translational institutes of medicine, one of which is the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. The institute was established in 2002 to build on Stanford’s leadership in stem cell science and to set the foundations for the creation of a new field of science: regenerative medicine. Under the direction of renowned stem cell researcher Dr. Irving Weissman, the institute is devoted to exploring the how stem cells are created, the mechanisms by which they are regulated and how they devolve into specialized cells. The ultimate goal is to translate this knowledge into dramatic new medical therapies for some of the world’s most serious and intractable afflictions. Finally, as part of Stanford School of Medicine, the institute is dedicated to training the next generation of stem cell researchers.

Lim Lab

The Lim Lab is focused on understanding basic mechanisms of immunosuppression in GBM. They extensively study both the myeloid and lymphocyte compartments to examine key players in the adaptive process utilized by GBM to avoid immune surveillance and elimination. 

Monje Lab

The Monje Lab studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms of postnatal neurodevelopment. This includes microenvironmental influences on neural precursor cell fate choice in normal neurodevelopment and in disease states.

Mackall Lab

The Mackall lab seeks to discover fundamental principles that control tumor:immune interactions and to apply these insights to develop novel immunotherapies for cancer.

Stanford Neurosurgical Training and Innovation (NeuroTraIn) Center

The goal of the NeuroTraIn Center is to introduce novel anatomical concepts and innovative surgical technique into real surgical practice. We are teaching the next generation of neurosurgeons the art of microsurgical dissection to spread this knowledge and to influence Neurosurgery worldwide.

Li Lab

The Li Laboratory studies the biology of brain tumors with the goal of developing novel therapeutics for the treatment of malignant brain tumors and translating that research into clinical trials. Currently we are studying a variety of different protein pathways that we hypothesize to be important players in glioblastoma formation and growth.

Petritsch Lab

The Petritsch lab broadly investigates underlying causes for the intra-tumoral heterogeneity and immune suppression in brain tumors from a developmental neurobiology context. Defects in cell fate control could explain many key defects present in brain tumors and an understanding of how brain cells control the fate of their progeny may identify novel points of vulnerabilities to target with therapeutics. Of special emphasis, we study the establishment of cell fates within normal hierarchical brain lineages for comparison to the dysregulated cell-fate hierarchies seen in brain tumors. 

Paul Mischel Lab

The Mischel laboratory has identified a central role for ecDNA (extrachromosomal DNA) in cancer development, progression, accelerated tumor evolution and drug resistance. These findings have provided a new understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of oncogene amplification and the spatial organization of altered tumor genomes, launching a new area of cancer research that links circular architecture with tumor pathogenesis.

Working closely with our collaborators in Team eDyNAmiC, we aim to bring new perspectives, new technologies, and new ways to diagnose and treat patients with some of the most aggressive forms of cancer by attacking the unstable genome and drugging the as-yet undruggable. We aim to identify and target the underlying mechanisms that generate ecDNA formation, transcription, and immune evasion as a class. By working with such an outstanding set of colleagues through Team eDyNAmiC, we have the unique opportunity to integrate cell biologic and live-cell imaging to monitor ecDNA in live cells, CRISPR-based and functional technologies to perturb and modulate ecDNAs, evolutionary theory, machine learning and mathematical approaches, and direct learning from patients to better understand the role of ecDNA in human cancer and to identify actionable vulnerabilities.

Brain Metastasis Consortium

The Stanford Brain Metastases Consortium is a unique partnership between scientists, physicians and surgeons from across the Stanford community, that brings together experts in research and clinical care of brain metastases

Gephart Lab

The Gephart laboratory accelerates translational brain tumor research, combining innovative techniques in genetics and cancer biology. They use novel genetic sequencing methods and modeling to understand how cancer grows in the brain, inadvertently supported by native brain cells.