Solid tumors like medulloblastoma often lack adequate blood supply, leading to low oxygen levels known as hypoxia. Hypoxia fuels cancer growth in part by changing the immune environment around them tumor, making it more supportive of cancer cells. Despite understanding hypoxia’s role in many cancers, its impact on medulloblastoma is not well-studied. Our project aims to uncover what genes are affected by hypoxia in medulloblastoma patients and how hypoxia influences the immune environment around medulloblastoma tumors.
We hope to use these findings to improve immunotherapy treatment for pediatric brain tumors. Our lab focuses on cell-based therapies, which have had limited success in brain tumors due to the immune system’s exhaustion caused by the tumor environment. Exploring hypoxia’s role in this process will guide us in developing better therapies to combat these issues. The large amount of clinical data provided by the Children’s Brain Tumor Network will allow us to explore how these processes work in human patients, and make sure that our findings are relevant in the clinic as well as the lab.
