"Being selected as a Sontag awardee is a tremendous honor that will allow my lab to build on our ongoing work examining cell types and circuits in the normal human brain to begin to understand how cortical circuits are re-shaped by diffuse glioma."

About DSA-Funded Research

Patients with low grade diffuse gliomas may live for years or decades with their tumor and often suffer from cognitive impairment and epilepsy that impair their quality of life. Recent work suggests that infiltrating tumor cells directly remodel the underlying brain circuitry to promote network hyperexcitability, and this enhanced neural activity in turn promotes tumor progression. While extensive work in cell culture and animal models has implicated several possible mechanisms of glioma-induced neuronal excitability, we still know very little about how these processes unfold in primary human tissues. My lab is utilizing tissue donated by patients undergoing neurosurgical resection at UCSF to ask these questions in the human brain. The goal of our Sontag project is to study how the intrinsic properties of single neurons (morphology physiology and gene expression) and local synaptic connectivity are altered in the setting of diffuse infiltrating glioma. We use multimodal strategies including single-cell genomics, electrophysiology, detailed morphologic reconstructions of single cells, and viral circuit mapping to interrogate neuronal diversity and connectivity in primary human brain tissue donated by patients undergoing neurosurgical resection. Ultimately, we hope to identify new therapeutic targets to improve cognition, reduce seizure burden and slow tumor progression in patients living with diffuse gliomas.