Hi there! During the following weeks, our blog will be dedicated to our SIOP Young Investigator Award winners!
Please meet Anirban Das YI from India (and Canada!), in his own words.
I completed my pediatrics (MD;2012) and pediatric-hematology/oncology (DM;2015) training at PGIMER Chandigarh, and then worked as staff-physician at Tata Medical Center, both in India (2016-19). In June 2020, I completed my pediatric neuro-oncology fellowship, following which I am pursuing the clinician-scientist training program at the Brain Tumour Research Centre at SickKids, Toronto.
My past research focussed on supportive care for infections in oncology, specifically developing and validating risk-stratification tools for fever-neutropenia. Subsequently I became interested in the rapidly-evolving field of pediatric brain tumors and their germline predisposition. Currently, as a clinical-research fellow in the Tabori lab, I am working on cancers with germline and acquired DNA replication repair deficiency (RRD), with our international consortium involving >45 countries.
Children, adolescents, and young adults with RRD can develop brain, hemato-lymphoid and gastrointestinal cancers. However, refractory cancers at virtually any site may harbour germline/acquired RRD. These cancers are hypermutant and resistant to cytotoxic therapy. However, hypermutation makes them susceptible to immunotherapy. Additionally, surveillance can improve survival for families with germline RRD.
In our SIOP-2020 presentation, we describe, for the first time, the unique biology of medulloblastoma and CNS embryonal tumors with germline RRD, and identify them as a ‘high risk’ group. My current research seeks to improve our understanding of the biology of RRD cancers, validate novel tools to diagnose them, and evaluate biomarkers that can predict response to immunotherapy. These cancers are more frequent in regions with high prevalence of endogamy, which are often regions with limited access to diagnostics. As such, the burden of RRD in childhood/AYA cancers may be higher than currently appreciated, and plausibly underdiagnosed due to lack of awareness. Therefore my goal is to establish a cost-effective algorithm for accurate diagnosis of these cancers, which can be utilized to help these children and their families across the globe.
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