Keith L. Ligon, MD, PhD

• Chief, Division of Neuropathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
• Director, Center for Patient Derived Models, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• Associate Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School

Office Phone

• 617-632-2357

Fax

• 617-632-8761

General

Treatment Centers

• Neuro-Oncology
• Pediatric Brain Tumors

Discipline

• Pathology

Clinical Interests

Developmental neuropathology, General neuropathology, Neuropathology of brain tumors

Location

Background

Board Certifications

• Anatomic Pathology, 2001
• Neuropathology, 2001

Fellowship

• Brigham and Women's Hospital, Neuropathology, 2001

Residency

• Brigham and Women's Hospital, Anatomic Pathology, 1999

Medical School

• University of Texas Medical School at Houston, 1997

Biography

Dr. Ligon is a Physician-Scientist with expertise in neuropathology and oncology focused on improving the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. He attended medical school and received his PhD at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School with joint appointments at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). He is the Chief of Neuropathology at BWH/DFCI and the Director of the Center for Patient Derived Models (CPDM) at DFCI. His research and clinical activities have improved the scientific understanding of brain tumors. He is directly involved in the training of medical and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, residents, and faculty. Several of the methods he has developed in his research have been implemented in the clinical pathology lab to improve patient diagnosis. He has also led efforts to train neuropathologists in the utilization of genomic tests in practice and led genomically informed clinical trials development at the local and national consortium levels.

Research

The focus of my work is on the basic and translational investigation of brain tumors. We specifically study developmental transcription factors and their role in brain tumor formation and neural stem cell biology. Translational studies in the lab utilize genomics and pathology tools to study human tumors. Our lab has expertise in adult and pediatric gliomas and specifically our work has focused on use of human patient derived cell line and patient derived xenograft models (PDCL, PDX), mouse genetic models (GEMMs). We also have extensive collaborations around human clinical trials for brain tumors and development of biomarkers to improve outcomes of brain tumor patients.