Grant: DRA : Canada Graduate Research Scholarship - Doctoral Program (CGRS D)

Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor in children. Even with aggressive treatment including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, the cancer comes back in a third of patients leading to death, while survivors face lifelong side effects like learning difficulties or secondary cancers. Safer and more effective treatments are urgently needed. A critical barrier to better treatment is cell heterogeneity within the tumors, the presence of many different cell populations that respond differently to treatment. Some of these cells are killed by treatment while others survive and drive relapse. However, we cannot reliably identify or target these resistant cells. My project tackles this problem with three goals. First, I will map all cell populations in human medulloblastoma tumors, creating the most detailed map of these tumors to date. Second, I will track which of these populations resist therapy and when during treatment they emerge by using a novel reporter system that I developed. This system colors each cell population differently, enabling us to watch resistance emerge in real-time and identify which cells are involved. Third, I will test FDA-approved drugs to find those that selectively kill the resistant cells, validating hits in patient-derived models and checking effects on healthy cells to maximize the translational potential of my work. By showing which cells drive relapse and identifying drugs to target them, this project moves treatment toward precise, population-specific therapy. Ultimately, it aims to prevent relapse, reduce side effects, and improve outcomes for the 500+ children diagnosed with medulloblastoma each year.