Dr. Kenneth J. Cohen

Dr. Christine Pratilas is a pediatric medical oncologist at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Professor of Oncology, Pediatrics & Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She joined the Hopkins pediatric sarcoma team in 2014. Dr. Pratilas received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Drew University in New Jersey and her medical degree from UMDNJ - Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (now Rutgers University), where she also completed her internship and residency from 1999 to 2002. From 2002 to 2005 she was a fellow in hematology and oncology in the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) Department of Pediatrics, and in the Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center. She was a postdoctoral research fellow in Dr. Neal Rosen’s Molecular Oncogenesis Laboratory at MSKCC. From 2006 to 2014 she was attending in Pediatric Oncology at MSKCC, specializing in developmental therapeutics & sarcoma. She has been the director of the pediatric sarcoma program at Hopkins since 2018. Dr. Pratilas focuses her research on cancer-associated pathways and signal transduction, which involves figuring out how a cell’s internal molecular pathways work, and how those pathways can be molecularly controlled. This knowledge is the basis for developing promising new molecularly targeted cancer therapies, which is the focus of Dr. Pratilas’s research. Among her important scientific contributions is advancing our understanding of how certain proteins that can be mutated in cancer, known as RAF kinases (specifically BRAF), affect a cancer cell’s behavior. The research in Dr. Pratilas' laboratory is focused on RAS signal transduction pathways, concentrating on pediatric sarcomas such as rhabdomyosarcoma and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors, in order to develop novel therapeutics for children with these tumors. Dr. Pratilas is rated as a Distinguished provider by MediFind in the treatment of Osteosarcoma. Her top areas of expertise are Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor, Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1), Neurofibromatosis, Adult Soft Tissue Sarcoma, and Osteotomy.

Michael Ortiz is a Pediatrics specialist and a Hematologist in Washington, Washington, D.c.. Dr. Ortiz is rated as a Distinguished provider by MediFind in the treatment of Osteosarcoma. His top areas of expertise are Wilms Tumor, Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC), Desmoplastic Small Round Cell Tumor, and Fibrolamellar Carcinoma.

Dr. Kathryn Lemberg is an Assistant Professor of Oncology and Pediatrics at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research, conducted with Johns Hopkins Drug Discovery, focuses on tumor metabolism and the development of new metabolic inhibitors to treat cancer. She has investigated novel glutamine antagonists in preclinical models of RAS-driven solid tumors. She is also interested in the effects of tumor metabolism on patient growth and development. Dr. Lemberg completed pediatrics residency training at Johns Hopkins and pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship training in the joint Johns Hopkins/National Cancer Institute program. She received her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Medical Scientist Training Program at Columbia University in New York, where her graduate research focused on ferroptosis, a novel oxidative cell death in cancer models. Dr. Lemberg sees pediatric and young adult sarcoma patients as part of the sarcoma team and has additional clinical focus on neurofibromatosis type I related solid tumors. Dr. Lemberg is rated as an Advanced provider by MediFind in the treatment of Osteosarcoma. Her top areas of expertise are Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor, Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1), Neurofibromatosis, and Adult Soft Tissue Sarcoma.