Targeted therapies are a brave new world in cancer treatment

BY DR CHETAN BETTEGOWDA

Blog Bettegowda

About the author

Chetan Bettegowda
Dr Chetan Bettegowda, MD, Ph.D., is a neurosurgeon at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Maryland, USA, and Jennison and Novak Families Professor of Neurosurgery. His focus areas include Brain Tumors, CyberKnife and Stereotactic Radiosurgery, Gliomas, Meningiomas, Spinal Cord Tumors, Spinal Tumors, and Stereotactic Radiosurgery.

Dr Bettegowda's research is dedicated to developing targeted therapies for patients with primary and metastatic tumors of the brain and spine. As part of this research, he has helped identify key genetic pathways that are altered in brain tumors, and he is developing clinical trials to selectively target these pathways. Dr. Bettegowda is also spearheading an ongoing clinical protocol to develop a simple blood test that can detect and monitor disease burden in patients with tumors affecting the central nervous system.

Dr Bettegowda is a Steering Committee Member of the AO Spine Knowledge Forum Tumor.

References and additional resources:

  1. Topalian SL, Hodi FS, Brahmer JR, et al. Safety, activity, and immune correlates of anti-PD-1 antibody in cancer. N Engl J Med. 2012 Jun 28; 366(26): 2443-54.
  2. Bettegowda C, Yip S, Lo SL, Fisher CG, et al. Spinal column chordoma: prognostic significance of clinical variables and T (brachyury) gene SNP rs2305089 for local recurrence and overall survival. Neuro Oncol. 2017 Mar 1; 19(3): 405-413.
  3. Bettegowda C, Yip S, Jiang B, et al. Prognostic significance of human telomerase reverse transcriptase promoter region mutations C228T and C250T for overall survival in spinal chordomas. Neuro Oncol. 2019 Aug 5; 21(8): 1005-1015.

The article is based on a series of lectures by the AO Spine Knowledge Forum Tumor. A selection of the lectures is published open access in the AO Spine Clinical Library.

More recorded lectures and videos available in the AO Video Hub.

Disclaimer

The articles included in the AO Spine Blog represent the opinion of individual authors exclusively and not necessarily the opinion of AO Spine or AO Foundation.