Brain tumors, especially malignant gliomas, are highly lethal diseases. Although we have achieved some successes with a few individual patients in clinical trials of novel therapeutics, little improvement in overall patient survival has been achieved over the past decade. My lab is particularly interested in the cells within a tumor that behave like stem cells (self-renewal and multipotency) because we have found that these cells have enhanced resistance to chemotherapy and radiation as compared to non-stem cells. We seek to understand all aspects of cancer stem cells including the microenvironment/niche, molecular markers, and survival pathways. Armed with this knowledge, we hope to better design clinical interventions to target these cells and, ultiimately, improve outcomes for glioma patients.