Fifth-year neurosurgical resident Umberto Tosi, MD, has been honored by the Congress of Neurological Surgeons with the KLS Martin Tumor Award for his abstract entitled “Therapeutic Monoclonal Antibody-Mediated Inhibition of NOTCH Pathway Prolongs Survival In High Grade Glioma Models.” Dr. Tosi presented his work last week at the annual meeting of the CNS in Houston.
The KLS Martin Tumor Award is presented each year for outstanding research on brain tumors. Dr. Tosi’s abstract describes the development of a novel monoclonal antibody, 1H5, designed to inhibit a protein responsible for NOTCH signaling initiwation. NOTCH signaling is implicated in high-grade gliomas, and Dr. Tosi’s work targeted that process to investigate how inhibiting it might slow tumor growth. The results showed that treating tumor tissue in vitro, as well as in in vivo xenografts using convection-enhanced delivery (CED), slowed progression of tumor growth and prolonged survival.
“High-grade gliomas generally have poor prognoses, in part because tumor stem cells escape treatment,” said Dr. Tosi. “The progression of gliomas is a complex process, and researchers have been challenged by the difficulty of interrupting NOTCH signaling due to the side effects of potential treatments. This new monoclonal antibody is very promising as it reduced tumor volume, slowed progression, and increased survival times, without serious side effects. We believe 1H5 deserves further investigation in clinical translation.”
Dr. Tosi’s research was done under the mentorship of Dr. Viviane Tabar, chair of neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. (Weill Cornell Medicine residents conduct research and treat patients at both NewYork-Presbyterian and MSKCC.) His co-authors on the abstract are Greta Ghita, Nayanendu Saha, Saki Abou Mrad, Alexandra Giantini-Larsen, Dimitar Nikolov, and Yanhong Yang.