Institute of Molecular Medicine at
Phoenix Children’s Research Institute
Phoenix Children’s Hospital
Adrienne C. Scheck, PhD, is a Senior Research Scientist in the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Phoenix Children’s Research Institute, Phoenix Children’s Hospital in addition to being an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University, an Associate Investigator in the Cancer Biology Program at the University of Arizona and an Adjunct Associate Professor the Barrow Neurological Institute (BNI). She received her BA from the University of Rochester and her PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. After a postdoctoral fellowship in viral oncology at Pennsylvania State College of Medicine she moved to Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to study AIDS-related dementia. Here she began studies of brain tumors and moved to the Barrow Neurological Institute in 1989 and remained there until 2017 when she moved to Phoenix Children’s Hospital and the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix. Dr. Scheck is an acknowledged leader in the field of metabolic alteration as an adjunct to the standard of care to improve survival and minimize side effects for patients with malignant brain tumors. To this end, her laboratory has been studying the use of the therapeutic ketogenic diet (KD) and metabolic ketosis for the treatment of malignant brain tumors. Their work has shown that the KD reduces the growth of malignant brain tumors through a wide variety of mechanisms, and it potentiates the effect of radiation and temozolomide chemotherapy. These preclinical studies have led to a clinical trial for patients with glioblastoma multiforme (www.clinicaltrials.gov NCT02046187). She is now working to extend these studies to pediatric brain tumors. Dr. Scheck also has a strong interest in science education, and she has mentored over 150 students ranging from High School to Neurosurgical Fellows. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her horses and cat.