Donald Williams Parsons, M.D., Ph.D.
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Positions
- Associate Professor
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Pediatrics-Oncology
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX US
- Associate Professor
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Molecular and Human Genetics
Baylor College of Medicine
- Associate Professor
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BCM Human Genome Sequencing Center
Baylor College of Medicine
- Member
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Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, Texas United States
Addresses
- Texas Children's Hospital, Clinical Care Center (Clinic)
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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
- Parsons DW, Roy A, Plon SE, Roychowdhury S, Chinnaiyan AM "Clinical tumor sequencing: An incidental casualty of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics recommendations for reporting of incidental findings." J Clin Oncol. 2014 Jul 20;32(21):2203-5. Pubmed PMID: 24958819
- Taylor MD, Northcott PA, Korshunov A, Remke M, Cho YJ, Clifford SC, Eberhart CG, Parsons DW, Rutkowski S, Gajjar A, Ellison DW, Lichter P, Gilbertson RJ, Pomeroy SL, Kool M, Pfister SM "Molecular subgroups of medulloblastoma: the current consensus." Acta Neuropathol. 2012 Apr;123(4):465-72. Pubmed PMID: 22134537
- Parsons DW, Li M, Zhang X, et al "The genetic landscape of the childhood cancer medulloblastoma." Science. 2011 Jan 28;331(6016):435-9. Pubmed PMID: 21163964
- Yan H, Parsons DW, Jin G, McLendon R, Rasheed BA, Yuan W, Kos I, Batinic-Haberle I, Jones S, Riggins GJ, Friedman H, Friedman A, Reardon D, Herndon J, Kinzler KW, Velculescu VE, Vogelstein B, Bigner DD "IDH1 and IDH2 mutations in gliomas." N Engl J Med. 2009 Feb 19;360(8):765-73. Pubmed PMID: 19228619
- Parsons DW, Jones S, Zhang X, Lin JC, Leary RJ, ..., Diaz LA Jr, Hartigan J, Smith DR, Strausberg RL, Marie SK, Shinjo SM, Yan H, Riggins GJ, Bigner DD, Karchin R, Papadopoulos N, Parmigiani G, Vogelstein B, Velculescu VE, Kinzler KW "An integrated genomic analysis of human glioblastoma multiforme." Science. 2008;321(5897):1807-12. Pubmed PMID: 18772396
- Jones S, Hruban RH, Kamiyama M, Borges M, Zhang X, Parsons DW, Lin JC, Palmisano E, Brune K, Jaffee EM, Iacobuzio-Donahue CA, Maitra A, Parmigiani G, Kern SE, Velculescu VE, Kinzler KW, Vogelstein B, Eshleman JR, Goggins M, Klein AP "Exomic sequencing identifies PALB2 as a pancreatic cancer susceptibility gene." Science. 2009 Apr 10;324(5924):217. Pubmed PMID: 19264984
- Jones S, Zhang X, Parsons DW, et al "Core signaling pathways in human pancreatic cancers revealed by global genomic analyses." Science. 2008 Sep 26;321(5897):1801-6. Pubmed PMID: 18772397
- Segal NH, Parsons DW, Peggs KS, Velculescu V, Kinzler KW, Vogelstein B, Allison JP "Epitope landscape in breast and colorectal cancer." Cancer Res. 2008 Feb 1;68(3):889-92. Pubmed PMID: 18245491
- Wood LD, Parsons DW, Jones S, et al "The genomic landscapes of human breast and colorectal cancers." Science. 2007 Nov 16;318(5853):1108-13. Pubmed PMID: 17932254
- Sjöblom T, Jones S, Wood LD, et al "The consensus coding sequences of human breast and colorectal cancers." Science. 2006 Oct 13;314(5797):268-74. Pubmed PMID: 16959974
- Parsons DW, Wang TL, Samuels Y, Bardelli A, Cummins JM, DeLong L, Silliman N, Ptak J, Szabo S, Willson JK, Markowitz S, Kinzler KW, Vogelstein B, Lengauer C, Velculescu VE "Colorectal cancer: mutations in a signaling pathway." Nature. 2005;436:792. Pubmed PMID: 16094359
- Wang Z, Shen D, Parsons DW, Bardelli A, Sager J, Szabo S, Ptak J, Silliman N, Peters BA, van der Heijden MS, Parmigiani G, Yan H, Wang TL, Riggins G, Powell SM, Willson JK, Markowitz S, Kinzler KW, Vogelstein B, Velculescu VE "Mutational analysis of the tyrosine phosphatome in colorectal cancers." Science. 2004 May 21;304(5674):1164-6. Pubmed PMID: 15155950
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