Gary Gerstenblith, MD

Dr. Aylin Tekes is the Section Chief of Pediatric Neuroradiology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, within the Department of Radiology and Radiological Science.Dr. Tekes primary expertise is in diagnostic pediatric neuroradiology encompassing all ages from fetus to young adolescents with particular interest in congenital anomalies, neonatal brain injury, brain tumors, seizure imaging. Utilization and application of advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques including diffusion-tensor (DTI), susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) as applied in hypoxic ischemic injury, brain injury in the premature brain, head trauma and ECMO well reflects in her publications. In addition to pediatric neuroimaging, Dr. Tekes is an expert in diagnosis and classification of soft tissue vascular anomalies and imaging of bladder exstrophy. Part of her research and daily activities involve QI processes, primarily targetted to reduce/eliminate radiation exposure in children when appropriate and improve workflow efficiency.She received her medical degree from Istanbul University and completed a residency in diagnostic radiology at Haydarpasa Research and Training Hospital in Istanbul, Turkey. She did clinical fellowships in Pediatric Radiology and Neuroradiology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital before joining faculty in 2008.

Dr. Brian Ladle is a pediatric cancer specialist in Baltimore, caring for patients with pediatric sarcoma. Dr. Ladle received his undergraduate degree in molecular biology from Brigham Young University. He earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed his residency at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and performed a fellowship in pediatric hematology and oncology at Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Ladle joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2013.Dr. Ladle's research focuses on translational immunology, with the goal of developing novel immunotherapies for the treatment of pediatric malignancies. His lab currently focuses on augmenting anti-tumor T cell responses to solid tumors such as osteosarcoma, Ewing sarcoma and rhabdomyosarcoma.He is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society for Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the Children's Oncology Group.

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.