Alumni Profiles
Gregory Friedman ‘97
After earning my BS degree from the Kinesiology Department at William & Mary, I attended the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) to study medicine. After receiving my MD degree from MCG, I moved on to the Medical School of the University of Alabama at Birmingham where I completed a residency in Pediatrics in 2005, and a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology and Oncology in 2008. I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UAB.
Part of my time is spent providing care for children with brain tumors and other cancers and teaching pediatric hematology and oncology to medical students, residents, and fellows. The majority of my time, however, is dedicated to research. My focus is on using viruses to target resistant cancer cells. I work with herpes simplex virus which has been engineered to be safe for normal cells but targets and kills pediatric cancer cells. I recently received a grant to continue this work from the St. Baldrick's Foundation. A copy of the news report can be found here:
https://www.childrensal.org/body.cfm?id=1730&action=detail&ref=146
Collaborating researchers at UAB have developed two new viruses that have been produced in clinical grade for an upcoming adult trial, and I am hopeful that in the next year or so we will open the first trial using engineered herpes simplex virus to treat recurrent brain tumors in children. For your interest, below is a link to a recent review article titled “Targeting pediatric cancer stem cells with oncolytic” that I wrote which discusses the targeting of chemotherapy and radiation resistant pediatric cancer cells with virotherapy.
