When following a patient for brain tumor recurrence, standard assessments fall short:  Imaging and clinical exams each occur only a few times per year, and patient questionnaires capture only a moment in time and may be unreliable due to the challenge of accurate self-assessment amidst insidious decline.
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Using expanded, state-of-the-art capabilities in autonomic testing, Peter Novak, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Autonomic Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is driving better understanding of hard-to-diagnose patients with orthostatic intolerance.
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To address the challenge of glioblastoma (GBM) recurrence and treatment resistance, a research team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital has reported success using a novel method to co-opt the tumor cells’ molecular machinery. The result makes the tumor more vulnerable to treatment. By delivering molecules that modify gene expression in the tumor, investigators have shown a significant survival benefit in a mouse model of GBM.
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Meningiomas and pituitary tumors traditionally have been regarded as surgically treated disease. However, some patients with these tumors face recurrence, premature morbidity and mortality. This challenge has motivated researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to zero in on molecular targets that shed light on prognosis and suggest novel pathways for biological treatments.
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Physician-investigators in the Department of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital are leading clinical trials of cutting-edge approaches for treating glioblastoma. Clinical trials are currently underway for patients with recurrent, progressive glioblastoma as well as patients newly diagnosed with high-grade gliomas as investigators pursue new treatment options to stimulate a patient’s immune system to recognize and eliminate cancer in the brain.
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Vikram (Vik) Khurana, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Movement Disorders in the Department of Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with colleagues and collaborators around the world, is building a research engine poised to deliver therapies that precisely target specific disease mechanisms in individual patients with Parkinson’s disease and related disorders.
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What if you could know, from a pre-operative MRI, whether a glioma was likely to have a genetic mutation that significantly alters prognosis?

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Image courtesy of INSIGHTEC

Each week, two or three patients with medically refractive essential tremor undergo  MRI-Guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS) Thalamotomy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, with often-life-changing results – fulfilling the promise of a technology that dawned here 20 years ago.

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New research from Brigham and Women’s experts in women’s epilepsy provides guidance on whether and when effectiveness of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) may be altered by the metabolic changes of pregnancy. The results suggest a need for therapeutic drug monitoring as soon as pregnancy is known.
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How do genetic variants disrupt brain cells and cause abnormal movements and memory loss? Can addressing these molecular glitches before disease advances lead to better outcomes?

The new Precision Neurology Program (PNP) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School addresses these key questions.

Researchers in the program, based in the BWH Department of Neurology, are drawing upon the full spectrum of basic research, clinical work, and discovery of targeted treatment for movement and memory disorders.

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