Neuropathology

All residents in pathology, neurology and neurosurgery spend a month on a Neuropathology rotation.

Neuropathology faculty are highly active in teaching, including didactic lectures for medical students and pathology residents, as well as "at-the-scope" teaching of trainees.

Faculty are involved in a number of regular didactic sessions, including:

• Weekly Brain Cutting Conferences
• Weekly Neuropathology Quality Assurance Conference and case review
• Weekly multidisciplinary Brain Tumor Board
• Weekly multidisciplinary Central Nervous System Metastatic Tumor Board
• Monthly Brain Cutting Conferences featuring cases of interest to Neurology and Neuroradiology residents and fellows
• Monthly Neuropathology Journal Club

The Division of Neuropathology offers an outstanding, comprehensive, ACGME–accredited Neuropathology Fellowship program, including training in surgical neuropathology, neurodegeneration, neuromuscular pathology, pediatric/perinatal neuropathology, forensic neuropathology and ocular pathology.

Research

Research is a great strength of the Division of Neuropathology. Several of our faculty are NIH-funded principal investigators, with emphases on brain tumors and neurodegenerative diseases. We also support programmatic research in the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease and the Lou and Jean Malnati Brain Tumor Institute. Our division supports Northwestern's National Institute on Aging P30 Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers, as well as its National Cancer Institute P50 Specialized Programs of Research Excellence in brain cancer.

As clinicians, our first responsibility is to our patients. We are one of the few centers in the country that offer expert consultations in neurodegenerative cases, as well as nervous system tumors and neuromuscular biopsies. Our faculty contributed to the 2020 World Health Organization "Classification of Tumors of the Central Nervous System," the ninth edition of "Greenfield's Neuropathology," and the 2019 Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy (LATE) consensus working group. We have state-of-the-art molecular diagnostic assays for tumor and neurodegenerative evaluation, including next-generation sequencing and genomic copy number profiling. Genomic methylation profiling is under development.

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