Our goals are to understand core mechanisms that drive brain cancers to enable development of effective therapies to cure patients. We study how oncogenes in primary brain tumors in adults and children reprogram cellular metabolism. Oncogenes alter uptake of nutrients such as glucose and glutamine to metabolize them to support their proliferation and to influence their epigenetic state. We use biochemical, molecular, genetic and positron emission tomography imaging to study cancer metabolism in brain tumors.