Metastatic Disease of the Nervous System

Dr. Schiff and his colleagues have conducted several dozen clinical trials assessing new treatments for glioblastoma, anaplastic gliomas, low-grade gliomas, brain lymphomas, brain metastases, and meningiomas. These trials have included treatment with new cytotoxic chemotherapy drugs, signal transduction inhibitors, radiation sensitizers, brachytherapy and radiosurgery, anti-angiogenesis agents, differentiation agents, monoclonal antibodies, and targeted immunotoxins. A second research focus is the cause of gliomas and brain lymphoma. Dr. Schiff has studied risk factors for the development of brain lymphoma in patients with intact immune systems, including the association between organ transplantation and the subsequent development of glioma. Spinal cord disease in cancer patients is another area of ongoing research, in particular the diagnostic role of MRI and the optimal management of metastatic spinal disease.

Prof. dr. Martin J. van den Bent, MD is a trained neurologist, who started his career in neuro-oncology in the Erasmus MC Cancer Institute, Rotterdam, the Netherlands back in 1992, after finishing his neurology residency. His clinical interests are the treatment of primary brain tumors, and neurological complications of systemic cancers. He has published widely on these topics, and he is the principle investigator of many clinical studies including international large phase III studies on glioma. From 2003 to 2009 he was the chair of the EORTC Brain Tumor Group, and since 2012 he is a board member of the EORTC, the major European research organization on cancer. He is currently a board member of the European Association for Neuro-Oncology (EANO). He is also member of the core group of the response assessment in Neuro-Oncology (RANO) group, and active in the RANO brain metastases group. In 2015 he received the European CanCer Organisation (ECCO) Clinical Research Award.