Jesse Obrochta

Jesse had a seizure while at work on 5/31/16. In emergency, CT then MRI scans identified a brain tumor in his right frontal lobe. The tumor was predicted, and later confirmed, to be an oligodendroglioma. He had a craniotomy on 6/14/16 at Kaiser in Redwood City. His surgeon, Dr. Moayeri, was able to resect >90% of his tumor (we knew going into surgery that a "tail" of the tumor crossed the midline and was not surgically approachable.) Recovery from surgery was longer and more difficult that we anticipated, but Jesse is often pain-free now. Thankfully he has had no additional seizures, but will remain on anti-seizure medication ongoing. Pathology results on his tumor confirmed it is anaplastic oligodendroglioma, grade 3, and identified multiple factors that are in his favor, in terms of efficacy of chemo therapy and prognosis. These are (1) positive for IDH1 mutation, (2) positive for MGMT methylation, and (3) 1p/19q chromosome co-deletion. There is scientific data showing that all of these markers increase the efficiency of killing tumor cells by chemotherapy. The basic mechanism is that the tumor cells have impaired ability to repair DNA breaks, whereas his healthy cells can repair and therefor are refractory to treatment.