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Rady Children’s Neuro-Oncology Program Announces Gordon Fellowship Recipient

Dr. Reid Hoshide Will Work in Laboratory of Dr. Robert Wechsler-ReyaDr. Hoshide

San Diego – Feb. 19, 2016 – The Neuro-Oncology Program at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego is thrilled to announce the 2016 recipient of the Gordon Fellowship in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology: Reid Hoshide, M.D., M.P.H. Dr. Hoshide will begin his fellowship in July 2016.

Dr. Hoshide is currently a resident in the Department of Neurosurgery at UC San Diego. He earned his Bachelors of Science, Master of Public Health and Doctor of Medicine at the University of Hawaii. He will be working in the laboratory of Robert Wechsler-Reya, Ph.D., director of tumor development at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and professor of pediatrics in the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at UC San Diego.

Dr. Wechsler-Reya is a leader in the field of translational neuro-oncology, with research interests in brain tumor initiation and progression. Through collaborations with Michael Levy, M.D., Ph.D., director of neurosurgery at Rady Children’s, and John Crawford, M.D., M.S., the Hospital’s director of neuro-oncology, he has been able to establish several patient-derived cell lines from children with newly diagnosed brain and spinal cord tumors that can be used to further understand the complex regulatory mechanisms that drive cancer cell growth.

Dr. Hoshide will be using his neurosurgical expertise to transplant newly resected brain tumors the same day of surgery into the brains of mice to mimic human disease. Upon tumor growth, Dr. Hoshide will perform surgical extraction of the xenografted tumors and will study the genetic landscape and tumor responsiveness to a variety of compounds using a high throughput drug screening process pioneered at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute that may help children at the time of disease relapse. The research efforts of Dr. Hoshide and Dr. Wechsler-Reya are expected to lead to published work that will serve as the basis for future clinical trials for children with newly diagnosed and recurrent central nervous system tumors.

The fellowship was established and is made possible through the Celebrating Futures Fund, founded by Andrew and Denise Gordon to benefit the Peckham Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, hematology/oncology research and neurosurgery at Rady Children’s. The Gordon’s 6-year-old son, Nathan, has been a patient at Rady Children’s since he was 15 months old, after being diagnosed with a rare tumor in his spinal cord. Now a happy and healthy kindergartener, he underwent multiple tumor resections and extensive treatments at the Peckham Center. The goal of the fund, inspired by the care Nathan received, is to sustain and grow clinical programs and advance translational research in the critically important field of pediatric neuro-oncology.

Fellowships in neuro-oncology are critical to advancement of the field and to improve the quality of care. The addition of a pediatric neuro-oncology fellow will enable the Neuro-Oncology Program to grow nationally and internationally in patient care, education and research.

About Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego:

Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego is a 520-bed pediatric care facility providing the largest source of comprehensive pediatric medical services in San Diego, Southern Riverside and Imperial counties. Rady Children’s is the only hospital in the San Diego area dedicated exclusively to pediatric healthcare and is the region’s only designated pediatric trauma center. In June 2015,U.S. News & World Report ranked Rady Children’s among the best children’s hospitals in the nation in all ten pediatric specialties the magazine surveyed. Rady Children’s is a nonprofit organization that relies on donations to support its mission. For more information, visit www.rchsd.org and find us on Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo.