Brain Tumor Program

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Pediatric Neuro-Oncology clinical fellowship

Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center (DF/CHCC)'s Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Program offers an intensive one-year clinical training program designed to prepare physicians for a career in pediatric neuro-oncology.

Our trainees receive highly specialized, multidisciplinary training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston.
 

Clinical highlights

Dana Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center is home to New England’s most active pediatric neuro-oncology clinical research program, which provides access to unique clinical trials for patients with newly diagnosed, relapsed or refractory brain tumors.

We are New England’s Phase I Children’s Oncology Group referral center, a Pediatric Oncology Experimental Therapeutics Investigator Consortium (POETIC) member and a member of the Department of Defense Neurofibromatosis Clinical Trial Consortium. We are also members of the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium (PBMTC).

We have a dedicated pediatric neuro-oncology service for chemotherapy administration and other inpatient hospitalizations on a dedicated clinical Neurosciences floor at Children’s with specialized staff and nurses.

• Our outpatient clinic sees more than 2,000 visits per year.
• We care for an average of 125 new patients each year.
• We follow more than 1,000 pediatric brain tumor survivors in our Outcomes Program.

We are skilled at improving current therapeutic approaches and outcomes of hard-to-treat pediatric brain tumors, such as atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor (ATRT), low-grade astrocytoma (LGA), high-grade astrocytomas (HGA), diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma and medulloblastoma.

Graduates from the Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Fellowship program, which was established in 2001, have secured faculty positions at DF/CHCC (Boston, MA), Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne, Australia), Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA), Hasbro Children’s Hospital (Providence, RI), and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY), among others.
 

Responsibilities

The Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Fellow will:

• work under the supervision of the pediatric neuro-oncology staff to diagnose, treat, and provide long-term follow-up for children with diverse CNS tumors on both the inpatient and outpatient services.
• be expected to develop a clinical research interest and complete a clinical research project during the course of the training program.
• obtain training in several areas related to neuro-oncology, such as neurosurgery, neuropathology, neuroradiology, nuclear medicine, radiation oncology and neuropsychology.
• be responsible for supervising first-year General Pediatric Hematology/Oncology fellows.
• gain experience in Phase I and II clinical trials
• During the fellowship year, the fellow will be appointed as Instructor at Harvard Medical School and receive attending physician status and privileges.