Biology Seminar Series- Class of '88 Talks

Brigette Widemann, National Cancer Institute

“Development of effective therapies for neurofibromatosis type 1 related peripheral nerve sheath tumors”

About the talk: This talk will describe the genetic tumor predisposition syndrome NF1 and the history of how the team and collaborators developed the first FDA approved medical therapy for NF1 peripheral nerve sheath tumors.

Dr Widemann will describe the genetics and clinical manifestations and the pathogenesis (RAS pathway activation) of NF1 tumors and how the evaluation of novel targeted therapies in clinical trials with novel endpoints combined with a natural history study of NF1 resulted in the identification of a targeted therapy resulting in consistent tumor shrinkage for the first time. Given these successes, they are applying a similar approach to the treatment of other disorders characterized by RAS pathway activation.

More information about the 2021-2022 Biology Seminar Series can be found here.