Dr. Cheshier went to medical school at Stanford where he also completed a Ph.D. in immunology. He performed his residency at Stanford Hospitals and Clinics and finished a fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto Canada. He has recently joined the faculty at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.

Dr. Cheshier's laboratory utilizes novel combinations of cell surface molecules to isolate pure populations of normal neural stem cells/progenitors and determines their relationships to purified malignant-brain tumor stem cells/progenitors; including the stage of development malignant transformation occurs, as well as, the genetic and epigenetic events that differentiate cancer progenitors from their normal cellular counterparts.  Dr. Cheshier’s current research emphasis is on adult and pediatric high-grade brain malignancies including medulloblastoma and glioblastoma. The group has also recently developed lenti-viral reporter constructs capable of marking cell populations on the basis of biochemical pathway activation such as Wnt, Notch, and SHh.  The laboratory has developed robust in vitro methods to study the developmental fates of neural and cancer cells including single-cell analysis. Cancer cell populations, including cancer stem cells, are regularly analyzed by orthotropic xenograft transplantation into immune-compromised mice.  Their hope is to gain insights into the events that transform normal stem cells into cancer stem cells which will lead to targeted therapies against these highly malignant cancers. This research is supported by the extensive infrastructure for translational research at Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.  Dr. Cheshier and his collaborators are all fully dedicated to achieving their goals through continuous collaboration, novel research discoveries, and excellent patient care.