Welcoming MaxLove Project’s Director of Translational Research, Adrienne Scheck, PhD!
We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Adrienne Scheck to the team as our Director of Translational Research. We’re working hard with Dr. Scheck to fund her research on the Ketogenic Diet and DIPG. You can support our work, here.
Dr. Scheck’s Bio
Adrienne C. Scheck, PhD, is a Research Scientist and Designated Campus Colleague at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix. Dr. Scheck received her undergraduate degree from the University of Rochester in NY and her PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. After a postdoctoral fellowship in viral oncology at the Pennsylvania State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania she moved to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to study AIDS-related dementia. While there she began her studies of brain tumors and moved to the Barrow Neurological Institute (BNI) in 1989, where she became interested in metabolic alterations in malignant brain tumors. To this end, her laboratory began to study the use of the therapeutic ketogenic diet (KD) for the adjuvant treatment of malignant brain tumors and she is considered an international leader in this field. Her laboratory research has shown that the KD reduces the growth of malignant brain tumors through a variety of mechanisms, and it potentiates the effects of radiation and temozolomide chemotherapy in adult and pediatric brain tumors. In addition, her work has led to studies demonstrating the utility of the KD in combination with a variety of therapies used for brain tumors and other cancers.
She is passionate about the use of metabolic therapies as an adjuvant for the standard of care to improve survival and minimize side effects for adult and pediatric patients with malignant brain tumors. In 2018 she moved to University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix and Phoenix Children’s Hospital, where her collaborative efforts have led to an expansion of this work to include studies of mitochondrial alterations due to ketone treatment in brain tumors, as well as mitochondrial alterations in autism and brain injury – both of which are being investigated as targets for ketogenic therapies. In addition, she is a founding member and serves on the executive committee of the International Neurological Ketogenic Society (INKS), a professional society dedicated to the practice and science of ketogenic diets and related metabolism-based therapies for neurological disorders.
Dr. Scheck believes in giving back to the community and has always had a strong interest in science education. As a full-time research scientist she started and directed the Scientific Enrichment Program for Students, a program that placed high school students in research laboratories around the Phoenix area. She has mentored over 160 high school students, college undergraduates, medical students and medical fellows in her laboratory. Dr. Scheck has been on numerous biotech school advisory boards and has been a speaker for the Arizona Science Center and a number of Community College Bioscience programs. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Southwest Behavioral & Health.
In her spare time she enjoys spending time with her 3 horses and 2 cats.
Dr. Scheck pictured with Max Wilford.