State-of-the-Art Brain Tumor Care
At the USC Brain Tumor Center, we offer comprehensive care for adults and children with all types of brain tumors. Our multidisciplinary team focuses exclusively on brain tumors, and we have deep experience from treating a very high number of complex brain tumor cases.
We use cutting-edge diagnostic tools and innovative approaches to design a treatment plan personalized to your precise care needs and type of tumor.
A brain tumor is a growth of abnormal cells in the tissue of the brain. They can be cancerous or noncancerous. We use cutting-edge tools to diagnose your tumor promptly and design a treatment plan customized for you. Procedures we perform include:
- Complex to minimally invasive surgical techniques
- Radiation therapy
- Radiosurgery
- Surgical resection
Our specialists work closely together to help you achieve the best possible outcome, no matter how complex the tumor.
Revolutionizing Brain Tumor Science
Brain tumors are remarkably resilient. As quickly as we find solutions to treat brain tumors, these tumors evade, dodge and take a new route. The greatest challenge is getting ahead of their ability to adapt.
The USC Brain Tumor Center is at the epicenter of expertise on brain tumors. Our center unites visionaries across neuroscience and cancer care to pioneer new techniques and discoveries that are advancing the entire field of neuroscience. Through the strong backing of an academic health system, our team of world-class experts is harnessing the power of our sophisticated technology to discover new treatments to prevent brain tumors from returning post-surgery as well as to stop current brain tumors from progressing.
Some of our most exciting areas of research include:
- Using artificial intelligence to develop new predictive and prognostic models to help learn which tumors respond best to which treatments.
- Employing advanced gene therapies to potentially convert cancer cells into immune cells.
- Creating personalized vaccines made from a patient’s own immune cells to inject directly into a tumor.
- Discovering new drugs, small molecules and gene therapies to combat tumors in partnership with our own drug discovery center at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
- Mapping the microenvironments within the entire brain. Once we fully understand these microenvironments, we can alter them, denying tumors fuel and transport.
- Performing epigenetic studies on brain tumor samples to examine gene expression. Preclinical trials using cells from these tumors are essential to identify which therapies might work best for which patients.
Building the Knowledge Bank on Brain Tumors
We have one of the world’s largest neuroimaging archives, including scans of 85,000 different brains, and the largest library of brain tumor tissue in the world.
Our extensive library of brain tumor tissue is on track to become the largest, most diverse library of brain tumor tissue in the world, and it’s where much of the preliminary testing of novel drug therapies happens. We have more than 80 samples that span pediatric, adult and geriatric tumors.
Deep Experience in Cancer Genomics
The USC Brain Tumor Center has made major strides in cancer genomics. Our center is one of the only laboratories in the country with experience studying long non-coding RNA. We are identifying how tumors use these genes and how we can target these genes for better patient outcomes. Using this research as well as other technologies such as gene editing, we have identified personalized approaches to understanding tumor responses to treatments in individual patients.
Discoveries That Benefit Our Patients
At the USC Brain Tumor Center, our clinicians and researchers are solving some of neuroscience’s most difficult and longstanding problems. Pioneering new techniques and making scientific discoveries isn’t simply about the relentless pursuit of knowledge, however, but rather it’s a means to offer the ultimate in compassionate and successful treatments for our patients.
This is why other centers in the region refer their most complex cases to the USC Brain Tumor Center. Not only do our neurosurgeons perform the most surgeries, but they also take on the toughest ones because we are on the frontier of research and development. As a result, the USC Brain Tumor Center treats an extremely high volume of cases in Southern California.
We possess the technology, the brain power and the clinical skill set, combined with access to other pioneering institutes across the academic health system, to continue blazing trails and unlocking the mysteries of the human mind and tumors of the brain.
Learn About Our Work
Learn more about the leading-edge research of our team.
Frank Attenello, MD – Neurosurgeon
Aram Modrek, MD, PhD – Radiation Oncologist
Josh Neman, PhD – Neuroscientist
David Tran, MD, PhD – Neuro-oncologist
Gabriel Zada, MD – Neurosurgeon
