Dr. Garzia works on a type of pediatric brain cancer called medulloblastoma. Kids affected by this tumor are either not cured or experience severe side effects due to the aggressive therapy. This proposal explores a possible causative link between altered neural activity and brain tumors. The team hypothesizes that altered response to neurotransmitters in the brain of predisposed kids causes brain cancer. If this is indeed true, new and less toxic therapies could be designed to revert this process, by simply repurposing already approved drugs that are known to function by altering neural activity. This will allow oncologists to decrease the doses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy that are currently given to kids with brain cancers.