Bio:

Dr. Cobbs is the Director of the Ivy Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment at Swedish Neuroscience Institute in Seattle. He is an authority in the area of glioblastoma surgery and research. He first hypothesized that malignant gliomas and other tumors may be associated with chronic viral infection with human cytomegalovirus (CMV), and he published the first evidence that CMV is associated with glioblastoma. His group has subsequently found evidence of cytomegalovirus infection in other tumor types and evidence that the CMV receptor is a major receptor tyrosine kinase involved in tumor growth. These findings have led other researchers to explore treating these tumors with antiviral drugs and tumor vaccines against the CMV pp65 protein. Preliminary studies demonstrate unexpected prolonged survival in these glioblastoma patients.

Dr. Cobbs received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his medical degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He completed a residency in Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he also completed a fellowship in molecular neuro-oncology. Dr. Cobbs has previously been a principal investigator on NIH R01 grants, Special Project in Oncology Research (NCI SPORE) grants at UAB and UCSF, as well as an editor at Journal of Neuro Oncology and other journals. He has been a member of the NCI SPORE and PO1 brain tumor study sections. His laboratory group published a new molecular classification of glioblastoma in conjunction with the Allen Brain Institute in the journal Science.