Acoustic Neuroma Research

An acoustic neuroma (also called a neurinoma or vestibular schwannoma) is a benign growth that arises from the vestibulo-cochlear nerve. Despite the biological indolence of these tumors, the clinical sequelae can be devastating. Understanding the molecular features that predict growth of sporadic vestibular schwannoma has been an important goal of the Acoustic Neuroma and Hearing Preservation Program at UCSF.

Recently our scientific team has established a novel method to study the genetics of each patient’s tumor in order to evaluate the tumor’s sensitivity to various drugs. This model relies upon establishing cell cultures from our surgical specimen, followed by transfection with viral vectors that allow the cells to grow indefinitely, and uses luminescence for noninvasive xenograft in vivo studies. Histology of xenografts ex vivo recapitulates the original surgical histology.