Dr. Amy Smith, Advisory Council Spotlight

Dr. Smith is the Division Chief of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Neuro-Oncology at Orlando Health-Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. She has spent her career caring for infants, children, and young adults fighting central nervous system tumors. Dr. Smith heads up Gift from a Child’s (GFAC) Center of Excellence as the PI at APH. Dr. Smith has this to say about GFAC, a national post-mortem brain tumor donation program,

““Working with Gift from a Child has been one of the most unique and special experiences of my career. It means so much to be able to offer an opportunity to families at such a difficult time to add to their child’s legacy.”

Between her work as  an investigator for the Pediatric Oncology Experimental Therapeutics Investigators’ Consortium (POETIC), an early phase research group, serving as national chair for the world’s largest study of ependymoma, and  co-chair of the ependymoma subcommittee of the Children’s Oncology Group she has published many papers.  Including:

• Stuckert, A., Bertrand, K. C., Wang, P., Smith, AA., & Mack, S. C. (2020). Weighing ependymoma as an epigenetic disease. Journal of Neuro-Oncology, 1-5 Weighing ependymoma as an epigenetic disease – PubMed (nih.gov) 
• Khan S, Solano-Paez P…. SmithA, Huang A. Clinical phenotypes and prognostic features of ETMRs (Embryonal Tumor with Multi-layered Rosettes) a new CNS tumor entity: A Rare Brain Tumor Registry study. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2021 Nov;5(11):800-813. 7. Clinical phenotypes and prognostic features of embryonal tumours with multi-layered rosettes: a Rare Brain Tumor Registry study – PubMed (nih.gov)
• Lilly, J., Mason, J., Appert, E., Heath, A., Zhu, Y., Zhang, B., … &, Smith AA., Waanders, A. (2020). MODL-26. CHILDREN’S BRAIN TUMOR NETWORK: ACCELERATING RESEARCH THROUGH COLLABORATION AND OPEN[1]SCIENCE. Neuro-Oncology, 22(Supplement_3), iii416-iii416. 8. The children’s brain tumor network (CBTN) – Accelerating research in pediatric central nervous system tumors through collaboration and open science – PubMed (nih.gov)

When Dr. Smith isn’t working she can be found outdoors:hiking in the mountains, biking or going to the beach, preferably with  family and friends.