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Current Medical Student Summer Research Fellows

·	Current Medical Student Research Fellows

Patrick Hawkes Preceptor: Randy Jensen, MD, PhD Institution: University of Utah Several novel treatment strategies have been recently developed in our laboratory for the treatment of meningiomas that show promising results. Particularly the co-treatment of meningiomas in a subcutanaeous flank mouse model using the calcium channel antagonists Diltiazem and Verapamil with the traditional drug regimens hydroxyurea (HU) and antiprogesterone mifepristone (RU486) has shown decreasing tumor size, decreasing microvascular density and inducing apoptosis in the G1 phase of the cell cycle after treatment with this combination therapy (Ragel et al). Due to the nature of the blood brain barrier, many drugs that have been quite successful outside of the central nervous system (CNS) have failed in their treatment capabilities in the CNS (DeAngelis). Recently we have developed an intracranial mouse model using cell lines stably trasfected with a luciferase reporter that has proven to reliably and accurately measure tumor growth in an in vivo. We propose using this l uciferase based intracranial meningioma mouse model to determine the efficacy of these drugs in treating meningioma.