Michelle Monje-Deisseroth is a neuroscientist and neuro-oncologist. She is a professor of neurology at Stanford University and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research program focuses at the intersection of neuroscience, immunology and brain cancer biology with an emphasis on neuron-glial interactions in health and oncological disease. In addition to her fundamental neuroscience work on brain development and plasticity, she is widely credited for pioneering the field of Cancer Neuroscience. She develops new treatments for brain cancers such as diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma and other diffuse midline gliomas.
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Early life and education
Monje stated that her great-grandparents emigrated to New York City to flee from anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. She attended kindergarten at the Jewish Community Center and then moved to public schools. Monje wanted to be a physician from the age of five, when she was in kindergarten. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and became interested in biology as a child. Monje was a figure skater during her childhood and taught figure skating to children with developmental disabilities whilst in Junior High. She was an undergraduate student at Vassar College. Monje studied medicine at Stanford University and earned her MD–PhD in 2004. She completed her internship at Stanford before leaving to join Harvard Medical School as a medical resident in neurology. Monje worked in the Brigham and Women's Hospital as well as the Massachusetts General Hospital. She completed a fellowship at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she was mentored by Philip A. Beachy, and was board certified in neurology in 2008 and in neuro-oncology in 2013.
Research
Her research considers the molecular mechanisms for neurodevelopment and neuroplasticity. She looks at how the neural circuits responsible for cognitive and motor functions are developed, and how the microenvironment of a tumour impacts the transition of precursor cells to diseased cells. She studies brainstem tumours as a paradigm for paediatric gliogenesis. Monje works at Stanford University, where she has developed new treatments for brain cancer since 2011. She has extensively investigated Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), a cancer for which it is difficult to identify effective chemotherapy and impossible to remove surgically, as the tumour grows in the brainstem. In 2009 she grew the first laboratory cultures of DIPG from deceased donors, which allowed her and her team to monitor the cell's growth and test chemotherapy agents. The tumour tissue resources developed in Monje's laboratory are shared with researchers all around the world. She also uses mouse models to test possible therapies.
Monje's research program focuses at the intersection of neuroscience, immunology and cancer biology. Her laboratory studies how neuronal activity regulates healthy glial precursor cell proliferation, new oligodendrocyte generation, and adaptive myelination; this plasticity of myelin contributes to healthy cognitive function, while disruption of myelin plasticity contributes to cognitive impairment in disease states like cancer therapy-related cognitive impairment. Her lab discovered that neuronal activity similarly promotes the progression of malignant gliomas, driving glioma growth through both paracrine factors and through electrophysiologically functional neuron-to-glioma synapses. Together with her former mentee Humsa Venkatesh, Monje also discovered that small cell lung cancer brain metastases similarly form bona fide synapses with neurons and are driven by neuronal activity.
Monje has led several of her discoveries from basic molecular discoveries to clinical trials. Monje led a Phase 1 clinical trial of panobinostat, a drug which slows the growth of DIPG and has been shown to increase survival rates in mice. She has also leveraged engineered immune cells called chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells to eradicate brain tumours. This work involved screening DIPG tumour cultures for surface molecules that could be targets for CAR-T cells. Monje found that GD2 is present on the surface of 80% of DIPG tumours. Over expression of the sugar molecule GD2 is caused by the H3K27M mutation, which drives the growth of tumour. Crystal Mackall developed CAR-T cells that attack the GD2. Working together, Monje and Mackall discovered that GD2-CAR T cells kill cultured DIPG cells which carry the H3K27M mutation. Monje's engineered cells can cross the blood–brain barrier, and have been shown to greatly reduce the number of cancer cells in mice. She has led a Phase I clinical trial (NCT04196413) of GD2-CAR T cells for children and young adults with DIPG and other diffuse midline gliomas that has shown promise in early reports.
Personal life
As of 2022, Monje was married to neuroscientist Karl Deisseroth, with whom she has four children.
Awards and honors
Her work pioneering the field of Cancer Neuroscience has been recognized with numerous honors, including an NIH Director's Pioneer Award, the 2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers a MacArthur Fellowship, the 2023 Paul Marks Prize, the 2023 Richard Lounsbery Award, the 2024 Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine, the 2025 Prize in Translational Neuroscience from the Max Planck Society, the 2025 Brain Prize, and election to the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine.
2025 Member, National Academy of Sciences
2025 Brain Prize
2025 International Prize in Translational Neuroscience from the Max Planck Society
2024 Ross Prize in Molecular Medicine
2023 Paul Marks Prize in Cancer Research
2023 Richard Lounsbery Award
2021 MacArthur Fellowship
2021 Member, National Academy of Medicine
2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
2017 Neuro-Oncology Investigator Award, American Academy of Neurology
Selected publications
Monje, Michelle (2003). "Inflammatory blockade restores adult hippocampal neurogenesis". Science. 302 (5651): 1760–1765. Bibcode:2003Sci...302.1760M. doi:10.1126/science.1088417. PMID 14615545. S2CID 36806485.
Monje, Michelle (2002). "Irradiation induces neural precursor-cell dysfunction". Nature Medicine. 8 (9): 955–962. doi:10.1038/nm749. PMID 12161748. S2CID 10347561.
Monje, Michelle (April 2003). "Radiation injury and neurogenesis". Current Opinion in Neurology. 16 (2): 129–134. doi:10.1097/00019052-200304000-00002. PMID 12644738.
Gibson EM, Purger D, Mount CW, Goldstein AK, Lin GL, Inema I, Miller SE, Bieri G, Zuchero JB, Barres BA, Woo PJ, Vogel H, Monje M (2014) Neuronal activity promotes adaptive oligodendrogenesis and myelination in the mammalian brain. Science, 344 (6183):487; 344:1252304 PMID 24727982
Venkatesh HS, Johung T, Caretti V, Noll A, Tang Y, Nagaraja S, Gibson EM, Mount CW, Pollepalli J, Mitra SS, Woo PJ, Malenka RM, Vogel H, Bredel M, Mallick P, Monje M (2015) Neuronal activity promotes glioma growth through neuroligin-3 secretion, Cell, 161(4):803-16 PMID 25913192
Monje M. (July 2018). "Myelin plasticity and nervous system function". Annu Rev Neurosci. 8 (41):61-76. Annu Rev Neurosci. doi: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-080317-061853.
Gibson E.M., Nagaraja S., Ocampo A, Tam L.T., Wood L.S., Pallegar P.N., Greene J.J., Geraghty A.C., Goldstein A.K., Ni. L., Woo P.J., Barres B.A., Liddelow S., Vogel H., Monje M. (2019) Methotrexate chemotherapy induces persistent tri-glial dysregulation that underlies chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment, Cell, 176 (1), 43–55.
Geraghty A.C., Gibson E.M., Reem G., Greene J., Ocampo A., Goldstein A.K., Ni L., Yang T., Marton R.M., Pasca S.P., Greenberg M.E., Longo F.M., Monje M. (2019) Loss of adaptive myelination contributes to methotrexate chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment. Neuron, 103(2):250-265