News

We are happy to announce our recruitment of Dr. Kaylyn Clark as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Rokita Lab and Brain Tumor Institute (BTI) at Children’s National Hospital (CNH) 🎉.

We were thrilled to contribute to the recent publication, “Germline analysis of an international cohort of pediatric diffuse midline glioma patients”, led by collaborator Dr. Marion Mateos. In this project, we assessed pathogenicity of germline variants driving DIPG and DMG. Read more about it here.

We are happy to announce our recruitment of Dr. Bicna Song as a Bioinformatics Scientist in the Brain Tumor Institute (BTI) Bioinformatics Core at Children’s National Hospital (CNH) 🎉.

Dr. Rokita recently sat down with the press team at Children’s National to discuss her laboratory’s research, the development of the Brain Tumor Institute (BTI) Bioinformatics Core, and her collaborative and open science vision for the future. Read all about it here!

We are happy to announce the publication of “Germline pathogenic DROSHA variants are linked to pineoblastoma and Wilms tumor predisposition”, an international collaboration in which we describe a new tumor syndrome characterized by pathogenic germline DROSHA variants. Read more about it here.

We are thrilled to welcome Alex Sickler as a Bioinformatics Engineer in the Rokita Lab and Brain Tumor Institute (BTI) Bioinformatics Core at Children’s National Hospital (CNH) 🎉. Alex joins us after many productive years of bioinformatics engineering and infrastructure management work at GeneDx, the National Cancer Institute, and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

We were thrilled to be a part of the recent publication, “Imaging Clusters of Pediatric Low-Grade Glioma are Associated with Distinct Molecular Characteristics”, led by our collaborator Dr. Anahita Fathi Kazerooni. Read more about it here.

Our latest manuscript, “Germline pathogenic variation impacts somatic alterations and patient outcomes in pediatric CNS tumors”, work led by Dr. Ryan Corbett, is now preprinted on MedRxiv!

From Dr. Yael Mosse’s laboratory, we are happy to see the work of Dr. Smita Matkar, “Kinome reprogramming of G2/M kinases and repression of MYCN contribute to superior efficacy of lorlatinib in ALK-driven neuroblastoma”, published today. We were happy to have played a small role in this work! Read more about it here.

As a part of our splice-derived neoepitope identification research, we partnered with Dr. Andrei Thomas-Tikhonenko’s laboratory at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in which they validated an NRCAM splice event as a targetable immunotherapeutic target for pediatric high-grade gliomas. Please read more in “Neuronal cell adhesion molecule (NRCAM) variant defined by microexon skipping is an essential, antigenically distinct, and targetable proteoform in high-grade glioma” here.

We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Ryan Corbett as a Senior Bioinformatics Scientist in the Rokita Lab at Children’s National Hospital (CNH) 🎉. Ryan joins us after two years of outstanding work under the mentorship of Dr. Rokita at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

Our newest manuscript, “Genetic ancestry superpopulations show distinct prevalence and outcomes across pediatric central nervous system tumors from the PBTA and PNOC”, work led by Dr. Ryan Corbett, has been accepted in NeuroOncology!

We are thrilled to announce the opening of the Rokita Lab at Children’s National within the Brain Tumor Institute (BTI) and Center for Cancer and Immunology Research (CCIR)! Situated in a leading pediatric institution, our lab is equipped with cutting-edge technology and resources, fostering a collaborative environment for groundbreaking discoveries. We’re excited to accelerate our research and expand our efforts to improve outcomes for children with brain cancer.