Email

dwparson@bcm.edu

Positions

Associate Professor

Pediatrics-Oncology
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX US

Associate Professor

Molecular and Human Genetics
Baylor College of Medicine

Associate Professor

BCM Human Genome Sequencing Center
Baylor College of Medicine

Member

Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas United States

Addresses

Texas Children's Hospital, Clinical Care Center (Clinic)

6701 Fannin St., 14th floor
Houston, TX 77030
United States
Phone: (832) 822-4242

Education

MD from Ohio State University College Of Medicine

01/2001 - Columbus, OH United States

PhD from Ohio State University College Of Medicine

01/1999 - Columbus, Ohio United States

Pathology

Residency at Johns Hopkins University School Of Medicine

01/2004 - Baltimore, Maryland United States

Pediatrics

Clinical Fellowship at National Cancer Institute

01/2007 - Bethesda, Maryland United States

Pediatric Hematology-Oncology

Clinical Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University

01/2008 - Baltimore, Maryland United States

Neuro-Oncology

Professional Interests

• Clinical application of genome sequencing in pediatric cancer care
• Molecular characterization of pediatric cancers

Professional Statement

Dr. Parsons is a board-certified pediatric hematologist-oncologist specializing in the care of children with brain and spinal cord tumors. He is the Director of the Center for Personal Cancer Genomics and Therapeutics and the Co-Director of the Neuro-Oncology Program and the Cancer Genetics and Genomics Program at Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Centers.

His research program focuses on the clinical application of genomic technologies in pediatric cancer care and the use of these sequencing methods to characterize the molecular basis of pediatric cancers. His work has been instrumental in the characterization of the genetic landscapes of a variety of pediatric and adult cancers, including the identification of IDH1 and IDH2 as critical genes in gliomas and MLL2 and MLL3 in medulloblastomas. He is the co-PI of the ongoing BASIC3 (Baylor Advancing Sequencing in Childhood Cancer Care) study, a NHGRI Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research project investigating the utility of tumor and germline whole exome sequencing for children with newly-diagnosed CNS and non-CNS solid tumors. He is also the BCM PI of the first Stand Up To Cancer-St. Baldrick’s Pediatric Cancer Dream Team project, “Immunogenomics to Create New Therapies for High-Risk Childhood Cancers”. Dr. Parsons is currently engaged in genomic analyses of numerous pediatric cancers, including central nervous system tumors, sarcomas, lymphomas, and histiocytic disorders.

Websites

Selected Publications

• Peters TL, Kumar V, Polikepahad S, et al "BCOR-CCNB3 fusions are frequent in undifferentiated sarcomas of male children." Mod Pathol. 2015 Apr;28(4):575-86. Pubmed PMID: 25360585
• Scollon S, Bergstrom K, Kerstein RA, Wang T, Hilsenbeck SG, Ramamurthy U, Gibbs RA, Eng CM, Chintagumpala MM, Berg SL, McCullough LB, McGuire AL, Plon SE, Parsons DW "Obtaining informed consent for clinical tumor and germline exome sequencing of newly diagnosed childhood cancer patients." Genome Med.. 2014 Sep 17;6(9):69. Pubmed PMID: 25317207
• Henderson GE, Wolf SM, Kuczynski KJ, Joffe S, Sharp RR, Parsons DW, Knoppers BM, Yu JH, Appelbaum PS "The challenge of informed consent and return of results in translational genomics: empirical analysis and recommendations." J Law Med Ethics. 2014 Sep;42(3):344-55. Pubmed PMID: 25264092
• Chakraborty R, Hampton OA, Shen X, et al "Mutually exclusive recurrent somatic mutations in MAP2K1 and BRAF support a central role for ERK activation in LCH pathogenesis." Blood. 2014 Sep 8;124(9):3007-15. Pubmed PMID: 25202140