Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, a Valhalla-based member of the Westchester Medical Center Health Network (WMCHealth), has become a new member institution within the Children’s Brain Tumor Network (CBTN), a collaborative research effort encompassing 34 institutions across the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia.
CBTN is a collaborative research effort to accelerate treatments for children with brain tumors. Collectively, CBTN’s 34 international member institutions have enrolled more than 5,000 study participants and more than 45,000 biospecimen samples to create the world’s most comprehensive repository of childhood brain tumors.
As a CBTN member site, Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital contributes consented samples of childhood tissue to help advance understanding of childhood brain tumor biology. Each brain tumor tissue sample is deidentified before undergoing genetic sequencing, a process that converts the samples into data to provide the greatest value to researchers worldwide, while protecting the privacy of each child. No single institution can collect enough samples on their own, making collaboration through CBTN an essential step towards more effective treatments for children.
Dr. Jared Pisapia, attending pediatric neurosurgeon at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, will serve as CBTN’s principal investigator at the hospital; he is also a member of the CBTN Scientific Committee.
“We’re excited to officially join the CBTN community and strengthen our partnerships with CBTN member sites around the world. The expertise and resources available through CBTN will help expand our own clinical and research efforts to improve the quality of care for every one of our brain tumor patients and their families,” said Pisapia.
