In Montreal, Dr. Nada Jabado hunches the faults of these tumors to better understand and defeat them.
Dr. Nada Jabado is a professor of pediatrics and human genetics at McGill University, as well as doctor at the hematology and oncology service at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
She distinguished herself and has been rewarded multiple times for her remarkable research work on tumors of the pediatric brain, in particular on understanding high -grade gliomas.
Because if cancers in children are rare, and brain tumors are more so, with around thirty cases discovered each year in Canada. “They remain the first causes of mortality and morbidity by cancer in children and adolescents, second cause in adults,” deplores the researcher.
Several discoveries
High grade gliomas are brain tumors that can occur very early in the development of the child, sometimes even during the intrauterine period.
They are aggressive and often synonymous with “death stop”.
The research of Dr. Nada Jabado and his team precisely concern the epigenoma of high -grade gliomas which allowed the discovery of several things.
First, “these tumors are associated with a development that has become abnormal. Which means that they are able to renew themselves forever ”.
In a second step, thanks to epigenetics (1), we hope to understand what causes this “abnormal” development.
“Our DNA is like music notes, image the specialist. There is a whole bunch of scores and it is the epigenoma that makes the score, which gives our DNA a meaning. Unfortunately for these children, the score is bad. The mutations of these tumors affect the score and make the cell remain young and aggressive. »»
Still work
Despite this progress, the path to go is still long and the questions numerous.
“We try to understand what their Achilles heel is. What are their vulnerabilities? How to grow and age the tumor so that it stops doing nonsense? Also understand why the immune system is not reactive enough in the face of these tumors. »»
A better understanding of what drives these tumors would allow the development of better treatments, and this is an important aspect because of the location of the latter, which sometimes prevents surgery.
“They are sometimes found in very difficult to access places, near structures that allow you to breathe, to move. The intervention is not simple and includes risks of too large functional repercussions. »»
Collaborate to move forward
The doctor indicates that brain tumors are generally quickly identified and the management is quickly done.
It is at the time of the transition to adulthood, that things get complicated a little.
“At 18, our patients often have to be transferred to adult oncology services and there it is the jungle. The teams do not have pediatric expertise. We sometimes see people who, up to 30 or 35 years old, have diseases that we often see in pediatrics and which are not optimally taken care of. There are forms of brain tumors in adults that could benefit from treatment that is given in pediatrics.
“There are tumors that I diagnose in 17 -year -old kids. At 18, I am forced to transfer them. Simply because the resources given by the government are very strict. As soon as there are expensive therapies or an MRI, we are harassed to transfer our young adults to a jungle where people are not used to or expertise. It is arbitrary. »»
Dre Nada Jabado defends the need for better collaboration and flexibility in patient monitoring in the long term.
Because it is also about research.
Moreover, several international consortia exist, in particular the Children’s Oncology Group which brings together more than 12,000 experts from the United States to Saudi Arabia via Canada and Australia.
“It is by grouping our resources that we are moving forward,” notes the specialist.
(1) The study of changes in the activity of genes which do not imply modification of the DNA sequence itself. In other words, epigenetics concerns modifications that influence the way in which genes are read and expressed.
