Basic Science Laboratory and Clinical Research for Primary Brain Tumors

Under the leadership of Dr. Jennifer Moliterno, the Section Chief of Neurosurgical Oncology in the Yale Department of Neurosurgery, the Yale Primary Brain Tumor Surgery Program is the busiest in Connecticut, as we continue to perform the highest volume of brain tumor surgeries each year. We are privileged to do so as part of an academic community of impressive scientific interest and work in brain tumors. Over the past several years, an increasing number of laboratories across our campus have benefited from our high volume of primary brain tumor specimens from these surgical procedures. Additionally, we have developed one of the largest prospective databases with detailed clinical and genomic data of primary brain tumors.

The Yale Primary Brain Tumor Surgery Program is dedicated to supporting brain tumor research and has spearheaded this biospecimen oversight. The Moliterno Lab has been founded as a centralized tumor bank, with primary brain tumor specimens being established as sphere cultures and patient derived xenografts. Our focus is then on clinical observation-derived research, as well as that generated from data mining. Our tissue bank is also then available for the collaborative study of brain tumor pathology. Diseases of interest include all types of primary brain tumors, most commonly gliomas, meningiomas and schwannomas.