Prof. James T. Rutka (MD, PhD, FRCSC, FACS, FAAP, FAANS) is the Head of the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto, Canada. Also prof. James T. Rutka is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neurosurgery (Journal of Neurosurgery).

Also prof. James T. Rutka is a Co-Director & Principal Investigator at the Research Institute and works as a neurosurgeon in the Hospital for Sick Children.

Prof. James T. Rutka works as a Senior Scientist at the Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre, his research direction is cellular biology.

At present, the main scientific interests and areas in which Prof. James T. Rutka is working are brain tumors, astrocytoma, medulloblastoma, cell biology and genetics, and new strategies for treating patients. Such strategies are necessary for patients with astrocytomas, because it is the most common type of malignant tumor of the brain that occurs within the central nervous system (CNS) and usually leads to the fatal outcome, despite all forms of traditional therapy. But such strategies can only be calculated by improving understanding of the underlying cellular and genetic changes that accompany these tumors.

For many years the laboratory of prof. James T. Rutka has been  oriented on two areas related to astrocytoma studies: 1) cytoskeleton-matrix interactions and 2) cell cycle control mechanisms. The knowledge gained from these studies can be translated in a relatively short period of time into new therapeutic strategies that have both scientific and clinical value. Recently the laboratory of prof. James T. Rutka has identified a new tumor suppressor gene on the 10q24 chromosome, called HSUFU, which is inactivated in several sporadic medulloblastomas. In the planned future studies, the laboratory hopes to explore the possibility that HSUFU can serve as a new target for the treatment of medulloblastomas.