DKFZ Research on Children's Brain Tumours Distinguished:

The Heidelberg-based scientist and paediatrician Dr Stefan Pfister receives the Alfred Müller Award 2011 endowed with 10,000 Euro. The award is donated by the accounting firm Ernst & Young GmbH and was offered together with the German Cancer Research Centre. Stefan Pfister and his collaborators were able to show that the genetic material in the cells of those tumours displays a characteristic change. At the same time, each patient displays other changes, which correlate with the degree of malignancy of his or her individual type of cancer. These include, for example, reproduction or loss of certain areas of genetic material or of entire chromosomes. It now is possible to classify risk groups displaying various degrees of intensity in the course of disease on the basis of such genetic characteristics. Given a good prognosis, for instance, the doctors could treat the disease in a less intensive manner and thereby reduce potential long-term consequences.

Conversely, certain high risk patients, who are not identified by way of the usual clinical and histological examination procedures, now can be treated more intensively from the very beginning, thus improving their chances of being cured. Adjunct lecturer Dr Stefan Pfister heads a research group in the Division Molecular Genetics at the German Cancer Research Centre. In parallel he works as a paediatrician in the Department of Paediatric Oncology at the University Hospital Heidelberg. Stefan Pfister's work concentrates on paediatric brain tumours, in particular on the most commonly occurring medulloblastomas, yet also on ependymomas, low-grade astrocytomas and glioblastomas. With his work, Stefan Pfister bridges the gap between basic research and clinical application.

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