Dr. Joshua Rubin is Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience with special expertise in normal brain development, clinical trials and neuro-oncology. He is also director of the Rubin Laboratory.

The focus in his laboratory is in the relationahip between normal brain development and the genesis of brain tumors. He believes that a better understanding of this relationship will support the development of novel brain tumor therapies with greater efficacy and reduced toxicity.

Dr. Rubin became the first person to engineer brain tumor cells to express firefly luciferase and to then use the light emitted to measure intracranial growth of medulloblastoma and glioblastoma. A breakthrough, it allowed for new study of the alpha-chemokine receptor CXCR4, found overexpressed in more than 23 cancers, contributing to tumor growth, relapse and therapeutic resistance. His technique allowed him to investigate the efficacy of CXCR4 antagonism, an approach shown to reduce tumor growth and sensitize cancer cells to treatments, among other important benefits.

Dr. Mohamed S. AbdelBaki is the Director of the Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Program at St. Louis Children's Hospital (SLCH), and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He is a member of the Central Nervous System (CNS) Committee at the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), and a study committee member for the CNS non-germinomatous germ cell tumor clinical trial (ACNS2021). Additionally, he is the institutional Principal Investigator (PI) for the Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology consortium (PNOC) – one of the largest consortia in North America conducting early phase clinical research in brain tumors – where I also serve as a member of the scientific committee.

Dr. AbdelBaki is currently lead the early-phase clinical trials for the Neuro-Oncology Program at SLCH. Moreover, he is the principal investigator for several clinical trials in a variety of pediatric brain tumors. Two of his clinical trials have been approved by PNOC; the first trial will test the feasibility of administering Natural Killer (NK) cells in patients with recurrent malignant brain tumors, while the second trial was also approved by Novartis pharmaceuticals and entails testing the combination of everolimus and trametinib in children with recurrent low-grade gliomas. Lastly, he will be leading the upcoming COG trial for CNS germinomas, a rare brain tumor that affects children and young adults.