Daniel W. Fults, M.D.
Positions:
Professor - Neurosurgery
Adjunct Professor – Oncological Sciences
Phone: (801) 581-6908
Lab Phone: (801) 587-9801
Fax: (801) 581-4385
Email: daniel.fults@hsc.utah.edu
Department of Neurosurgery
University of Utah School of Medicine
175 North Medical Drive East
Building 550 - Room 5229
Salt Lake City, UT 84132
Research Description:
Dr. Fults is a neurosurgeon whose clinical practice is focused on the surgical treatment of patients with brain tumors. His laboratory research is focused on the pathogenesis of medulloblastoma, a malignant brain tumor that arises in the cerebellum in children. An aggressive treatment approach, combining surgery with radiation and chemotherapy, gives five-year survival rates exceeding 70%, depending upon clinical risk factors such as patient age and tumor size. Despite these encouraging statistics, treatment-related toxicity often causes cognitive impairment, skeletal growth retardation, hormonal imbalance, as well as psychiatric and behavioral disturbances in long-term survivors. Thus, there is a critical need to identify signaling molecules that can be targeted therapeutically to maximize tumor growth suppression and minimize collateral brain damage. Dr. Fults studies how signaling molecules that normally govern the growth and differentiation of neural stem cells cause medulloblastoma. His approach utilizes a mouse model, in which oncogenes can be transferred and expressed in neural stem cells in the cerebellum of mice. Dr. Fults has found that activation of the Hedgehog signaling pathway, which is important in normal brain development, induces tumors in mice that closely mimic human medulloblatomas. Tumor induction can be enhanced by cell growth factors Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF) and Insulin-like Growth Factor–II (IGF-II), oncogenic transcription factors (Myc proteins), and the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2. Dr. Fults is also using this mouse model as a preclinical testing platform for therapies that target Hedgehog and HGF signaling. His lab group has shown that an HGF–neutralizing monoclonal antibody or a small molecule that inhibits Hedgehog signaling prolongs survival of mice, in which medulloblastomas are induced by oncogene transfer.
Research Keywords:
brain tumor, medulloblastoma, Hedgehog signaling, neural stem cells, mouse model