Mohamed Abdelbaki, MD, was born and raised in Egypt — a country which he loves dearly and still visits every year with his family. He came to the U.S. in 2006 to start a residency in general pediatrics, followed by a fellowship in pediatric hematology, oncology and bone marrow transplant, then another fellowship in pediatric neuro-oncology.

Right after finishing both fellowships at Texas Children’s Hospital, Abdelbaki was appointed as the director of neuro-oncology at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital at St. Louis University until 2015. He, then, moved to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where he became the director of the neuro-oncology fellowship program and led the early-phase clinical trials for pediatric brain tumors.

Abdelbaki is currently the director of the Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Program at St. Louis Children’s Hospital (SLCH) and an associate professor of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

He is a member of the Central Nervous System (CNS) Committee at the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) and a study committee member for the CNS non-germinomatous germ cell tumor clinical trial (ACNS2021). Additionally, he is the institutional principal investigator for the Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology consortium (PNOC) — one of the largest consortia in North America conducting early phase clinical research in brain tumors — where he also serves as a member of the scientific committee and the chair of the Germ Cell Tumor Working Group.

Like many other Pediatric Neuro-Oncologists at large academic institutions, his responsibilities and interests include patient care, research and education. As for patient care, he was awarded one of the highly esteemed accolades at Nationwide Children’s Hospital for excellence in patient care in 2016 (Partners in Care, Partners in Hope Family Centered Care Award). As far as education, he was honored to receive the Distinguished Teaching Award from St. Louis University School of Medicine in 2015. On the research aspect, he currently leads the early-phase clinical trials for the Neuro-Oncology Program at SLCH. Moreover, he is the principal investigator for several clinical trials in a variety of pediatric brain tumors. Two of his clinical trials have been approved by PNOC. The first trial will test the feasibility of administering Natural Killer (NK) cells in patients with recurrent malignant brain tumors; while the second trial was also approved by Novartis Pharmaceuticals and entails testing the combination of everolimus and trametinib in children with recurrent low-grade gliomas. Lastly, he will be leading the upcoming COG trial for CNS germinomas — a rare brain tumor that affects children and young adults.

Abdelbaki has developed a global neuro-oncology program at SLCH, through which he established collaborations with several institutions around the world and has consulted upon several brain tumor patients from all over the globe. He leads an international neuro-oncology tumor board every month which is attended by neuro-oncologists from more than ten countries to discuss the care and treatment plans of brain tumor patients.