Nader Sanai, MD

Nader Sanai, MD, is the Francis & Dionne Najafi Chair in Neurosurgical Oncology at the Barrow Neurological Institute.  An internationally acclaimed neurosurgeon and one of the nation’s highest-volume brain tumor surgeons, Dr. Sanai has built a specialty clinical practice devoted to patients with benign and malignant brain tumors, particularly those in high-risk areas. He is an expert in intraoperative brain mapping techniques, which identify and preserve areas of motor, sensory, and language function during brain surgery.  In 2016, Dr. Sanai was elected to the American Academy of Neurological Surgeons, the most respected academic organization in neurosurgery.

Dr. Sanai’s brain tumor research efforts are funded by over a dozen external granting agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Sanai is one of only a handful of neurosurgeons in the United States serving as the principal investigator for multiple NIH and NCI R01 grants and the only neurosurgeon to have led multiple research studies reported in the journals Nature and The New England Journal of Medicine.  Dr. Sanai has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and delivered over 200 national and international lectures in neuro-oncology.  Collectively, Dr. Sanai’s published research has led to over 30,000 total citations in academic literature.

Dr. Sanai oversees all brain tumor research at the Barrow Neurological Institute.  In 2018, he founded and now directs the Ivy Brain Tumor Center, a not-for-profit drug development program for brain tumor patients.  The Ivy Center is supported by the Ben & Catherine Ivy Foundation, the Barrow Neurological Foundation, and the Barrow Neurological Institute.  Its precision medicine program is the first of its kind worldwide and it specializes in clinical trials designed to accelerate drug development.  In 2023, the Ivy Center and the biopharmaceutical company, GSK, reported promising results from a Phase 0 trial in newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients.  To translate these findings into the first life-prolonging glioblastoma drug approval in decades, the Ivy Brain Tumor Center announced the initiation of a global Phase 3 clinical trial across 11 countries. 

Click here to learn more about Dr. Sanai and why the fight against brain cancer is personal to him.