Dr. Amanda Muhs Saratsis MD

Amanda Muhs Saratsis, MD
Dr. Saratsis is a pediatric neurosurgeon at Advocate Children's Hospital in Park Ridge, IL. As a neurosurgery resident at Georgetown University Hospital, Dr. Saratsis implemented a protocol for nationwide post-mortem brainstem glioma tissue acquisition to establish a pediatric brain tumor biobank. Dr. Saratsis conducted the first proteomic analysis of spinal fluid from children with brainstem glioma to detect tumor-associated proteins. Upon the completion of her residency, Dr. Saratsis completed a year-long research fellowship in at Children’s National Medical Center, where she conducted the first comprehensive, four-dimensional analysis of pediatric brainstem glioma tissue specimens, revealing tumor subgroups and clinically detectable biomarkers of disease. After completing a Pediatric Neurosurgery fellowship at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, she joined the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Neurological Surgery, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. There, Dr. Saratsis initiated multiple collaborative translational research projects to study tumor markers and the epigenetic effects of the H3K27M histone mutation in pediatric glioma. Her NIH-funded laboratory was the first to identify pediatric brain tumor-specific mutations in the cerebrospinal fluid (2017). After serving as an Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery and Pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, Dr. Saratsis retuned to the Chicago area where she now works for Advocate Children's Hospital. Dr. Saratsis holds a number of local, institutional and national leadership positions, including serving on the Young Neurosurgeons Committee, NREF, and AANS/CNS Tumor and Pediatric Section Executive Committees, and is on the Board of Directors for Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation. She has published her research in multiple peer-reviewed journals, is the author of six neurosurgery book chapters, and is the recipient of multiple honors recognizing her innovative research including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons Kenneth Shulman Award and Louise Eisenhardt Award. She also currently advises for Chimerix / Jazz Pharmaceuticals on the development of the first and only molecularly-targeted therapy for H3K27M mutant glioma, which recently gained FDA approval.