Biography

As the Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery and Director of the Brain Tumor Treatment and Research Center at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaume Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMGCCC), Dr. Woodworth provides leadership and surgical care within a multidisciplinary team of neurosurgeons, radiologists, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, and pathologists, treating brain cancer patients. These clinical and administrative roles enable the cross-disciplinary group of engineers, cancer biologists, and clinician-scientists within the Translational Therapeutics Research Group (TTRG) to address key challenges in counteracting the patho-biology and improving the treatment of brain tumors.

Much of this work is centered on using the operating room as a portal for discovery and opportunity to improve our understanding of and therapeutic delivery for brain tumors. His team studies and utilizes advanced brain tumor models, including genetically-engineered and patient-derived versions directly from the operating room where the tumor tissue is rapidly passaged in vivo to avoid ischemia and biological transformation during extended manipulations or culturing conditions. The team have developed a nestin-TV-A transgenic rat model to enhance investigations into the molecular and cellular mechanisms of the glioblastoma margin and enable surgery, local delivery, focused ultrasound, and targeted radiation-based studies.

Dr. Woodworth's research team is leading the first-in-human clinical trials of MRI-guided focused ultrasound-mediated blood-brain-barrier disruption (MRgFUS-BBBD) in the United States. These studies are designed to establish the safety and feasibility of MRgFUS BBBD, with the goal of using this technology to improve therapeutic delivery and effects against infiltrating brain tumors. They have optimized reproducible and safe FUS treatments in small animals and humans, in particular treating areas within the non-enhancing regions of infiltrating gliomas. Information from these studies is informing the timing and parameters for FUS BBBD applications in clinical trials and future applications.

A long-standing goal in treating patients with glioblastoma (GBM), the most common and deadly primary brain cancer in adults, is linking tumor-specific features with effective anti-tumor therapies to generate long-term treatment responses. Dr. Woodworth believes that following the principles of (1) maximal, safe tumor removal, (2) use of intra-operative access to better understand the disease and deliver therapies, and (3) targeting therapeutics to residual/unresectable invading cancer elements, we will turn GBM from a uniformly fatal cancer into a chronic disease with the potential for cure.