Sylvia Cheng

Central nervous system (CNS) tumours are growths of abnormal cells residing in either the brain or spinal cord. Not all tumours are necessarily cancerous; if a tumour lacks the ability to spread to other tissues then it is considered non-cancerous (benign). However, even benign tumours can still be dangerous in the brain or spinal cord…

For the first couple years of his life growing up in Syria, Ebrahim Aldalati was, as he put it, “a regular baby.” He had no health issues and was just like other kids. But by the time he was two, that all changed.

After Dr. Sylvia Cheng treated an 8-year-old girl with a brain tumour, the girl’s parents asked the BC Children’s Hospital researcher and oncologist whether an earlier diagnosis of their daughter’s medulloblastoma, the most common type of childhood brain cancer, would have made a difference.