Ian’S THESIS NOW PUBLISHED!
🧠 What can human brain development teach us about childhood brain cancer?
Our new publication is now out in BMC Cancer!
This work represents the MSc thesis of UofT Medical Biophysics trainee Ian Cheong and University of Waterloo trainee Leo Lau.
We analyzed 336,598 single cells from the developing human and mouse cerebellum to better understand unipolar brush cells (UBCs)—a rare neuronal population believed to be the cell of origin for Group 4 medulloblastoma.
Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant childhood brain cancer and still lacks effective targeted therapies. These tumours are thought to arise from disrupted cerebellar development. Understanding those developmental programs could help refine diagnosis and open new therapeutic directions for these cancers.
Using single-cell transcriptomics and integrative bioinformatics, we identified distinct UBC populations in the mid-gestation human cerebellum, including two that appear enriched in humans relative to mice. By linking developmental and tumor datasets, we found that Group 4 medulloblastoma cells most closely resemble one of these human-enriched UBC states.
Together, this work highlights the importance of studying human-specific developmental biology to better understand disease. It represents our lab's first foray into the space of developmental origins of medulloblastoma. Thank you to colleagues who provided feedback on earlier versions. We are now hard at work on an expanded version of this project - community feedback welcome!