The Timon Labintcev Pediatric Brain Tumor Research Team

On January 16, 2026, Dr. Priyanka Sehgal received a Certificate recognizing her as Lead Scientist on the Timon Labintcev Pediatric Brain Tumor Research Team

From the January 9, 2026, post in Cornerstone Blog "Family Award Supports Innovative Immunotherapy Research for Childhood Brain Cancer"

A new research project led by Andrei Thomas-Tikhonenko, PhD, Chief of the Division of Cancer Pathobiology at CHOP, will aim to refine an immunotherapy that has the potential to treat pediatric high-grade glioma.

Dr. Thomas-Tikhonenko, who also is the Mildred L. Roeckle Endowed Chair, received support for his research project, “Targeting the Glioma-Specific NRCAM Proteoform with Adoptive T-Cell Therapies,” from the Timon Labintcev Pediatric Brain Tumor Award.

As part of the Center for Childhood Cancer Research, Dr. Thomas-Tikhonenko’s laboratory studies the pathobiology of solid and hematopoietic malignancies.

Dr. Thomas-Tikhonenko’s previous research focused on a process called alternative splicing, in which cells make different proteins from the same gene by rearranging exons, the building blocks of messenger RNA. Almost every glioma sample had two NRCAM microexons missing.

“We hypothesized that the genes expressed in gliomas and healthy brains might be the same, but splicing of microexons might work very differently,” Dr. Thomas-Tikhonenko said in this Snapshot Science. “That proved to be the case.”

Yury Labintsev and Ekaterina Labintceva established the Timon Labintcev Pediatric Brain Tumor Award in memory of their son, Timon, who died from brain cancer at age 12. The award is intended to support excellent research that advances the understanding and treatment of childhood brain tumors.