Dr. Carl Koschmann, a Pediatric Neuro-Oncologist, has chosen a career path that very few could possible navigate through daily emotionally not to mention the scientific medical side of his work and research.
You see Carl spends his days with children quite often all younger children at Mott’s Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor. Since Dr. Koschmann specializes is pediatric oncology as it relates to brain cancers and tumors you can understand already the emotionally toll it must take on this father of two small children. When asked how does he manage when so many of his patients quite often don’t survive their cancer journey, he passionately said “I understand that someone has to do this work and I am honored to be able to help families during times of unimaginable life altering situations.”
And help he does, Dr. Koschmann’s four bench lab which exists partially thanks to the support for the Chadtough fund named after Chad Carr, a full of life little boy who lost his battle to the most devastating form of brain cancers, DIPG.
With his team of medial scientist are clearly on the front lines everyday searching for new pathways of cures, understandings, or treatments that can help children who are the most innocent of our society that find themselves with a diagnosis of a rare brain cancer. “I first and foremost try to help parents understand that it's not their fault, they did not do something to cause this, unlike cancers that attack a person later in life that could have some ties to lifestyle, pediatric brain cancers are linked directly to something going awry in the cells of a child's development of their brain.”
Our sit down talk with Dr. Koschman helped us to better understand children brain cancers as well as how far the world of oncology has come with precision medicines and immunology the therapies. Dr. Koschmann also discussed with us the term financial toxicity, a term families who are struggling to take care of someone with cancer, understand all too well.
Through the many hours of visits for medical appointments with a child and the daunting costs of treatments and medications, a family can find themselves quickly in an unpleasant financial situation just trying to make ends meet.
After the time in the lab with Dr. Koschmann, we went over to the clinic where we filmed Dr. Koschmann with a spunky 6 year old girl, Emerson who insisted on showing Carl she could do several pushups. Emerson was diagnosed with an aggressive high grade glioma in her thalamus; Dr. Koschmann and his team have been working with Emerson to improve her quality of life.
Emerson developed headaches in late May. Over the course of June 2018, she developed dizziness and double vision and was seen in the Emergency Department at another hospital, at which point an MRI showed a large tumor in a structure in the middle of her brain (thalamus). She underwent a biopsy (you cannot operate to remove tumor in this critical structure), and then radiation. Her tumor has a mutation called H3K27M -- this is consistent with a high-grade glioma.
Emerson is part of a pediatric trial which is open to 4 sites in the world - and only one site in the midwest- University of Michigan. It is funded in part by the Chad Carr Pediatric Brain Tumor Center. Early results show patients with thalamic H3K27M tumors may have the best response. ON2C01 affects dopamine signaling and causes some tumor cells to die. It is taken by mouth once a week. We do not fully know why it works in H3K27M cells. Emerson has had a good response - tumor is "quiet" on last few MRIs - and she is going to school full time, with essentially no side effects.
WE are thrilled we are able to feature Dr. Koschmann in our film “Those on the Front lines of Cancer.“