A lifetime of achievements: Roger Packer, M.D.

Earlier in December, Roger Packer, M.D., senior vice president of the Center for Neurosciences and Behavioral Medicine at Children’s National Hospital, received the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Symposium on Pediatric Neuro-Oncology at the meeting organized in Karuizawa, Japan. The prestigious recognition is a testament to the years of commitment and dedication Dr. Packer has devoted to the care of children with brain tumors and as such, have placed him as a top leader.

This award is a recognition of how the field has grown since the first International Symposium on Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Dr. Packer organized in Seattle in 1989. “It grew from a small gathering of investigators to now a multidisciplinary group of over 2,000 investigators,” Dr. Packer says.

Over the years, Dr. Packer and his team in Washington, D.C., have made meaningful contributions to children all around the world diagnosed with childhood brain tumors, including medulloblastoma and gliomas. These findings have contributed to an increase of the survival rate from 50% to over 80% for children with medulloblastoma. In addition, his contributions have led to newer molecular targeted therapies and improved the quality of life of children who are long-term survivors.

“The field, especially in the last decade, rapidly transitioned to a more biologically informed field,” Dr. Packer explains. “We are now utilizing new, exciting discoveries in biology and genetics to inform new approaches to treatment. This kind of transition gives us great hope for the future.”

In his early career, Dr. Packer worked with two neuro-oncology patients who died and would impact his decision to further study this field. At that time, there was minimal understanding of the nature of neuro-oncology diseases or how to best treat them. As a neurologist, he was frustrated by the lack of understanding and as a pediatrician, he was frustrated at the lack of ability to do success management.

“I saw this as a gap in my personal knowledge and found that the field was struggling to come up with new answers and new approaches,” he says. “But at the same time other, advances were being made in child cancer care, such as with leukemia. However, there was no wide focus on pediatric brain tumors.”

Combining his knowledge of neurology with his curiosity and relying on other leaders that surrounded him in the same field, Dr. Packer worked on driving this new work forward. Today, he is still heavily involved in the development of treatment protocols that are increasingly transitional for a variety of brain tumors, including low-grade and high-grade gliomas.

“With the help of our great colleagues at Children’s National, we continue to try to develop new means to treat these tumors, including immunological approaches and the incorporation in the use of novel means, such as low-intensity and high-intensity focused ultrasound,” he says. “We also have an excellent multidisciplinary team at Children’s National that has grown over the last decade some of whom are acknowledged national leaders in the fields of brain tumors, clinical research and clinical care. We also have a robust program focusing on the neurocognitive outcome of children and ways to intervene to ameliorate intellectual compromise and improve quality of life.”