School of Medicine
Showing 201-279 of 279 Results
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Xiang Qian
Stanford Medicine Endowed Director
Clinical Professor, Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Clinical Professor (By courtesy), NeurosurgeryCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsClinical Interests
-Pain Medicine:
Facial pain
Migraine and headache
Trigeminal Neuralgia and Glossopharyngeal neuralgia
Cancer Pain
Spine Disease
Neuropathic pain
Interventional Surgery
CT guided Procedure
Opioid Management
-Facial Nerve neuralgia and neuropathy
Hemifacial Spasm
CT guided awake RFA of facial nerve
Research Interests:
-Medical device development
-AI based headache diagnosis and management
-CT guided intervention
-Intra-nasal endoscopy guided procedure
-Optogenetics
-Mechanisms of neuropathic pain
-Ion channel and diseases
-Neurotoxicity of anesthetics -
John Ratliff, MD, FACS
Professor of Neurosurgery and, by courtesy, of Orthopaedic Surgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research interests focus upon preventing complications in spine surgery, assessing patient outcomes after spine surgery procedures, and developing population-based metrics for assessing surgical outcomes.
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Lawrence Recht, MD
Professor of Neurology and, by courtesy, of Neurosurgery
On Leave from 03/01/2023 To 08/31/2023Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur laboratory focuses on two interrelated projects: (1) assessment of glioma development within the framework of the multistage model of carcinogenesis through utilization of the rodent model of ENU neurocarcinogenesis; and (2) assessment of stem cell specification and pluripotency using an embryonic stem cell model system in which neural differentiation is induced.
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Nidhi Rohatgi, MD MS
Clinical Professor, Medicine
Clinical Professor (By courtesy), NeurosurgeryBioNidhi Rohatgi, MD, MS, SFHM is a Clinical Professor of Medicine and Section Chief for Surgical Co-management (Neurosurgery, Orthopedic surgery, and ENT) in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. She primarily manages medical co-morbidities and strives to prevent medical complications in post-surgical patients in the hospital setting. She has led several quality improvement and clinical research studies and is passionate about finding innovative, cost-efficient and sustaining solutions in healthcare. She serves as an investigator in NIH and industry sponsored clinical trials and serves as the Director of Clinical Research (Palo Alto) in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Stanford University. She is an invited speaker at national and international meetings and serves on several national committees. She is the recipient of local, national, and international awards for her work as a clinician, educator, and researcher. She is a strong advocate for patient experience and serves as the Medical Director for the Clinical Advice Services at Stanford Health Care.
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Sarada Sakamuri, MD
Clinical Associate Professor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Clinical Associate Professor (By courtesy), NeurosurgeryBioDr. Sarada Sakamuri specializes in neuromuscular medicine. Her interests are in peripheral nerve injury, neuromuscular ultrasound, EMG/NCS, neurogenetic disorders, and medical education.
Dr. Sakamuri studied psychology at Rutgers University and she graduated with Phi Beta Kappa distinction. She obtained her medical degree from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, where she lead multiple community service and medical education activities and was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha and Gold Humanism Honor Societies. She moved to the Bay Area to pursue neurology residency at Stanford, where she later served as chief resident. She then completed two years of fellowship in EMG/Clinical Neurophysiology and Neuromuscular Medicine and research training at Forbes Norris MDA/ALS Research Center.
Upon graduation she joined the faculty at Stanford Neurology and Neurological Sciences, in the divisions of Neuromuscular Disorders and General Neurology. She was the first Stanford adult neurologist to establish clinics in San Pablo and Alameda and founded the Stanford Neurology Clinic in Emeryville. She continues to see patients with general neurology needs in the Neurology Residency Continuity Clinics.
Dr. Sakamuri's passion is neuromuscular medicine, with a focus on peripheral nerve traumas and disorders. She is Co-Director of the Center for Peripheral Nerve Surgery along with neurosurgeon Dr. Thomas J. Wilson. She performs advanced evaluations of peripheral nerve conditions by integrating nerve and muscle ultrasound and neurophysiologic testing (EMG/NCS) at the bedside, and founded the Stanford Neuromuscular Ultrasound Program. She has advanced training in nerve and muscle ultrasound, and sits on the Neuromuscular Ultrasound Committee of the American Association of Neuromuscular and Electrodiagnostic Medicine (AANEM).
She is board-certified in Neurology and Neuromuscular disorders by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN). She is certified in EMG/NCS by the American Board of Electrodiagnostic Medicine (ABEM), and also holds a Certificate of Added Qualification in Neuromuscular Ultrasound.
Dr. Sakamuri's other passion is medical education. She is the Director of the Stanford Neuromuscular Medicine Fellowship and Associate Director of the Clinical Neurophysiology/EMG Fellowship. She supervises a weekly neurology resident continuity clinic and enjoys teaching sessions medical students as well as the fantastic neurology and physiatry residents and fellows. She has fond memories of her time as a clinical instructor at Jagiellonian University Medical College in Poland. -
Cynthia Harryman Samos
CIRM CLIN2 Project Manager, Neurosurgery
Current Role at StanfordProject Manager and Writer/Editor for the Department of Neurosurgery
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Robert Sapolsky
John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor, Professor of Biology, of Neurology and of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsNeuron death, stress, gene therapy
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Neil Schwartz, MD, PhD
Clinical Professor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Clinical Professor (By courtesy), NeurosurgeryCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsMy clinical interests involve inpatient and outpatient care of patients with neurovascular diseases, mostly ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke. I have a particular interest in cervical artery dissection, non-atherosclerotic vasculopathies, and stroke in the young.
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Mehrdad Shamloo
Professor (Research) of Neurosurgery and, by courtesy, of Neurology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe ultimate goal of the Shamloo laboratory is to rapidly advance our understanding of brain function at the molecular, cellular, circuit and behavioral levels, and to elucidate the pathological process underlying malfunction of the nervous system following injury and neurologic disorders such as stroke, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson’s disease, and autism. We have been focusing on the noradrenergic system and approaches leading to restoration of brain adrenergic signaling in these disorders.
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Lawrence Shuer, MD
Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI have clinical research interests in the surgical treatment of epilepsy. I am also interested in new developments in the treatment of craniosynostosis a congenital abnormality of infant's skulls
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Gerald Silverberg
Professor of Neurosurgery, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAge-related changes in the blood-brain barrier (BBB)and on CSF dynsmics decrease the clearance of toxic metabolites, such as amyloid beta peptides (A-betas), from the brain. I am studing the effects of aging and hydrocephalus on the BBB receptors that transport A-betas and on the formation and bulk flow of CSF.
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Harminder Singh, M.D.
Clinical Professor, Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMinimally Invasive Cranial and Spinal Surgery, Endoscopic Keyhole Surgery
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Stephen Skirboll
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research focuses on screening strategies to identify and characterize cancer stem cells (CSCs) in human gliomas. We are pursuing this in several ways: 1) a novel colony-forming antibody live cell array to identify distinct CSC surface phenotypes, 2) RNAi screens to identify kinases critical for CSC tumorigenicity, 3) high throughput small molecule and chemical screens to identify compounds that selectively kill or target CSCs, and 4) identifying CSCs using the tumor specific EGFRvIII
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Ivan Soltesz
James R. Doty Professor of Neurosurgery and Neurosciences
BioIvan Soltesz received his doctorate in Budapest and conducted postdoctoral research at universities at Oxford, London, Stanford and Dallas. He established his laboratory at the University of California, Irvine, in 1995. He became full Professor in 2003, and served as department Chair from 2006 to July 2015. He returned to Stanford in 2015 as the James R. Doty Professor of Neurosurgery and Neurosciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. His major research interest is focused on neuronal microcircuits, network oscillations, cannabinoid signaling and the mechanistic bases of circuit dysfunction in epilepsy.
His laboratory employs a combination of closely integrated experimental and theoretical techniques, including closed-loop in vivo optogenetics, paired patch clamp recordings, in vivo electrophysiological recordings from identified interneurons in awake mice, 2-photon imaging, machine learning-aided 3D video analysis of behavior, video-EEG recordings, behavioral approaches, and large-scale computational modeling methods using supercomputers. He is the author of a book on GABAergic microcircuits (Diversity in the Neuronal Machine, Oxford University Press), and editor of a book on Computational Neuroscience in Epilepsy (Academic Press/Elsevier). He co-founded the first Gordon Research Conference on the Mechanisms of neuronal synchronization and epilepsy, and taught for five years in the Ion Channels Course at Cold Springs Harbor. He has over 30 years of research experience, with over 20 years as a faculty involved in the training of graduate students (total of 16, 6 of them MD/PhDs) and postdoctoral fellows (20), many of whom received fellowship awards, K99 grants, joined prestigious residency programs and became independent faculty. -
Scott G. Soltys, MD
Professor of Radiation Oncology (Radiation Therapy) and, by courtesy, of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy clinical and research interests focus on the development of new radiation techniques involving stereotactic radiosurgery and radiotherapy for the treatment of malignant and benign tumors of the brain and spine, as well as functional disorders such as trigeminal neuralgia.
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Konstantina M. Stankovic, MD, PhD, FACS
Bertarelli Foundation Professor and Professor of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery (OHNS) and, by courtesy, of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur investigative efforts are organized along 3 research thrusts:
1. Vestibular schwannoma: uncovering mechanisms of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) and identifying better therapies;
2. High-resolution imaging of the inner ear;
3. Novel sensing of and therapies for SNHL.
Given the complex, multifaceted nature of these problems, our approach to them involves domain-specific customization and fusion of tools from molecular biology, systems neuroscience, biotechnology and otologic surgery. -
Gary K. Steinberg, MD, PhD
Bernard and Ronni Lacroute-William Randolph Hearst Professor of Neurosurgery and Neurosciences and Professor, by courtesy, of Neurology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur laboratory investigates the pathophysiology and treatment of cerebral ischemia, and methods to restore neurologic function after stroke. Treatment strategies include brain hypothermia, stem cell transplantation and optogenetic stimulation. Our clinical research develops innovative surgical, endovascular and radiosurgical approaches for treating difficult intracranial aneurysms, complex vascular malformations and occlusive disease, including Moyamoya disease, as well as stem cell transplant.
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Peter Tass
Professor of Neurosurgery
BioDr. Peter Tass investigates and develops neuromodulation techniques for understanding and treating neurologic conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, dysfunction following stroke and tinnitus. He creates invasive and non-invasive therapeutic procedures by means of comprehensive computational neuroscience studies and advanced data analysis techniques. The computational neuroscience studies guide experiments that use clinical electrophysiology measures, such as high density EEG recordings and MRI imaging, and various outcome measures. He has pioneered a neuromodulation approach based on thorough computational modelling that employs dynamic self-organization, plasticity and other neuromodulation principles to produce sustained effects after stimulation. To investigate stimulation effects and disease-related brain activity, he focuses on the development of stimulation methods that cause a sustained neural desynchronization by an unlearning of abnormal synaptic interactions. He also performs and contributes to pre-clinical and clinical research in related areas.
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Nicholas Telischak
Clinical Assistant Professor, Radiology
Clinical Assistant Professor (By courtesy), NeurosurgeryBioDr. Nick Telischak is a neurointerventional surgeon (neurointerventional radiologist) who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of stroke, brain aneurysms, brain arteriovenous malformations, brain and spinal dural arteriovenous fistulae, carotid artery stenosis, vertebral body compression fractures, spinal metastases, axial back pain, and congenital vascular malformations. Dr. Telischak treats all of these conditions using minimally-invasive, image-guided procedures and state-of-the-art technology.
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Suzanne Tharin
Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe long-term goal of my research is the repair of damaged corticospinal circuitry. Therapeutic regeneration strategies will be informed by an understanding both of corticospinal motor neuron (CSMN) development and of events occurring in CSMN in the setting of spinal cord injury. MicroRNAs are small, non-coding RNAs that regulate the expression of “suites” of genes. The work in my lab seeks to identify microRNA controls over CSMN development and over the CSMN response to spinal cord injury.
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Reena Thomas, MD PhD
Clinical Associate Professor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Clinical Associate Professor (By courtesy), NeurosurgeryCurrent Research and Scholarly Interests-Neuro Oncology Immunotherapy
-Health Equity
-Medical Education -
Zachary David Threlkeld
Clinical Associate Professor, Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Clinical Associate Professor (By courtesy), NeurosurgeryBioDr. Threlkeld cares for critically ill patients with acute neurologic illness, including traumatic brain injury, stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, and epilepsy. He completed his residency training in neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, and joined the Stanford Neurocritical Care program after completing fellowship training in neurocritical care at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He has a particular clinical and research interest in traumatic brain injury. His research uses advanced imaging modalities like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to better understand disorders of consciousness.
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Maxine Umeh Garcia
Instructor, Neurosurgery
BioMaxine was born and raised in Sacramento, CA and transferred to UC Merced in 2007 after attending a community college for 2 years. She received her B.S. in Developmental Biology with a minor in Psychology in 2010. During the last year of her undergrad, Maxine was invited to do research in the lab of Dr. Michael Cleary, studying nervous system development. Because of this research experience, Maxine decided to stay at UC Merced to pursue her Master’s in Quantitative and Systems Biology, graduating in 2013. Immediately after graduating, she started her Ph.D. at UC Davis, where her research centered on triple negative breast cancer – a type of breast cancer that has a high incidence in Black and African women.
After completing her PhD in Biochemistry, Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology with an emphasis in Translational Research in 2019, Maxine became a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in the department of Neurosurgery. Dr. Umeh Garcia’s research focuses on breast cancers that metastasize (or travel) to the brain. Maxine was recently promoted to an instructor position in her department after receiving a major career development award from the National Cancer Institute (K99/R00), which will fund the remainder of her postdoctoral research and provide 3 years of funding for Maxine to establish her own independent research lab. Using her background in bench research, informatics, and translational research, Dr. Umeh Garcia hopes to bring together biologists, data scientists, and clinicians to make important advances in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Additionally, as a women and underrepresented minority, Dr. Umeh Garcia is keenly interested in mentoring women and underrepresented students, and in developing novel strategic approaches to increasing diversity in biomedical sciences and academic research. -
Anand Veeravagu
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and, by courtesy, of Orthopaedic Surgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe focus of my laboratory is to utilize precision medicine techniques to improve the diagnosis and treatment of neurologic conditions. From traumatic brain injury to spinal scoliosis, the ability to capture detailed data regarding clinical symptoms and treatment outcomes has empowered us to do better for patients. Utilize data to do better for patients, that’s what we do.
Stanford Neurosurgical Ai and Machine Learning Lab
http://med.stanford.edu/neurosurgery/research/AILab.html -
Hannes Vogel MD
Professor of Pathology and of Pediatrics (Pediatric Genetics) and, by courtesy, of Neurosurgery, Neurology and of Comparative Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research interests include nerve and muscle pathology, mitochondrial diseases, pediatric neurooncology, and transgenic mouse pathology.
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Xinnan Wang
Associate Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMechanisms underlying mitochondrial dynamics and function, and their implications in neurological disorders.
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Matthew Willsey
Clinical Instructor, Neurosurgery
BioMatthew Willsey is originally from Greenwood, Indiana. He attended MIT, where he received B.S. and M.Eng. degrees in Electrical Engineering with a research focus in digital signal processing. He later attended medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and completed his neurosurgery residency at the University of Michigan in 2022. During his residency, he completed an enfolded CAST-approved fellowship in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. He is currently completing a post-graduate, one-year fellowship in stereotactic/functional neurosurgery and epilepsy at Stanford University under the direction of Dr. Jaimie Henderson. His clinical interests include deep brain stimulation, MR-guided focused ultrasound, epilepsy, pain, and spine.
His research has largely focused on neuromodulation and intracortical brain-computer interfaces (iBCI). He completed a PhD under Drs. Parag Patil and Cynthia Chestek during his resident research time plus an additional leave-of-absence year. He is currently working in the Neural Prosthetics Laboratories at Stanford where he has continued to investigate using iBCIs to restore fine motor control in human participants with paralysis enrolled in the BrainGate2 clinical trial. -
Thomas J. Wilson
Clinical Associate Professor, Neurosurgery
BioDr. Thomas J. Wilson was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He attended the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, earning his MD with highest distinction. While a medical student, he was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Training Fellowship and spent a year in the lab of Dr. Rakesh Singh at the University of Nebraska. He was also elected to the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. He completed his residency training in neurological surgery at the University of Michigan and was mentored by Dr. Lynda Yang and Dr. John McGillicuddy in peripheral nerve surgery. Following his residency, he completed a fellowship in peripheral nerve surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, working with Dr. Robert Spinner. He is now Clinical Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Peripheral Nerve Surgery at Stanford University. He also holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, with focused certificates in Clinical Trials and Health Finance and Management. His research interests include peripheral nerve outcomes research, clinical trials advancing options for patients with peripheral nerve pathologies and spinal cord injuries, and translational research focused on improved imaging techniques to assist in diagnosing nerve pain and other peripheral nerve conditions. His clinical practice encompasses the treatment of all peripheral nerve pathologies, including entrapment neuropathies, nerve tumors, nerve injuries (including brachial plexus injuries, upper and lower extremity nerve injuries), and nerve pain. Dr. Wilson enjoys working in multi-disciplinary teams to solve complex problems of the peripheral nervous system. His wife, Dr. Monique Wilson, is a practicing dermatologist in the Bay Area.
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Erin K. Wipff MSN, RN, ANP-BC
Affiliate, Neurosurgery
BioErin Wipff earned her Bachelors of Arts in Biology from University of California, Santa Cruz and Bachelors of Nursing from Johns Hopkins University. She received her Masters of Science in Nursing in Adult Primary Care with a minor in HIV from the University of California, San Francisco. She is board certified through the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and a member of the California Association of Nurse Practitioners and Sigma Theta Tau. Her experience ranges from care of patients in the inpatient and outpatient settings with focuses in research, oncology, endocrinology, and neurosurgery. She currently supports the neurosurgical practice of Dr. Juan Fernandez-Miranda, Surgical Director of the Stanford Brain Tumor, Skull Base, and Pituitary Centers.
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Albert J. Wong, M.D.
Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur goal is to define targets for cancer therapeutics by identifying alterations in signal transduction proteins. We first identified a naturally occurring mutant EGF receptor (EGFRvIII) and then delineated its unique signal transduction pathway. This work led to the identification of Gab1 followed by the discovery that JNK is constitutively active in tumors. We intiated using altered proteins as the target for vaccination, where an EGFRvIII based vaccine appears to be highly effective.
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Lulu Xing
Basic Life Res Scientist, Neurosurgery
Current Role at StanfordResearch Scientist
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Nobutaka Yoshioka
Affiliate, Neurosurgery
BioNobutaka Yoshioka is the Director of Neuroplastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Tominaga Hospital, Osaka, Japan.
He received a doctorate degree in medicine from Osaka City University. He completed a residency program in both plastic surgery and neurosurgery in Japan.
Board Certified in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Neurosurgery, He is an international member of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and the North American Skull Base Society. He was a post-doctoral associate in Microsurgical Neuroanatomy at UF from 2003 to 2004. He is the author of more than 100 articles (including 27 in English) and one book.
His current research interests include facial reanimation surgery. -
Quan Zhou
Instructor, Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCurrent Research Focus: molecular targeted theranostic imaging of brain tumor and enhanced drug delivery
Areas of Insterests: molecular imaging, theranostics, fluorescence-guided surgery, brain tumor, drug delivery
Dr. Zhou has made substantial contributions to the growing biomedical research field of Molecular Imaging. Molecular imaging emerged in the mid twentieth century as a highly specialized discipline at the intersection of molecular biology and in vivo imaging, focusing on imaging molecules of medical interest within intact living subjects. Dr. Zhou’s research addresses some of the nation’s most pressing issues related to the development of effective approaches for accurate detection of human diseases and improving their treatment outcome. Her innovations in molecular imaging technology enables the visualization, characterization, and quantification of biologic processes taking place at the cellular and subcellular levels. The multiple and numerous potentialities of Quan’s work are applicable to the diagnosis of diseases such as cancer, neurological and cardiovascular diseases. Her strong education background in biological sciences and biomedical engineering followed by postdoctoral training in translational and clinical research have helped her develop multiple disease-specific molecular probes and imaging strategies for early cancer diagnosis, image-guided surgery, therapeutic delivery prediction and at-risk cardiovascular plaque detection. Her research also contributes to improving the treatment of these disorders by testing and optimizing the execution of new interventions. Her work is expected to have a major economic impact due to earlier disease detection and personalized therapy.
Dr. Zhou’s research has led to emergence of novel solutions and opportunities, in particular, for molecular imaging of cancer and other diseases, for discovering, leveraging and integration of cancer biomarker and tumor microenvironment information, and for novel approaches to acquire real-time high-resolution contrast enhanced visualization of tumor margin and optimization based on imaging depth, quality and speed. Dr. Zhou has been able to formulate the involved clinical and biological problems into biomedical engineering frameworks and find ways to exploit a variety of modern techniques and approaches from photoacoustic imaging, fluorescence-guided surgery, micro-electromechanical systems and therapeutic delivery strategies in developing elegant and effective solutions. Her work in the Neurosurgery Department and Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford involves research related to developing tumor-specific molecular probes, advanced imaging methods and therapeutic delivery systems for adult and pediatric patients with malignant brain cancers to improve margin detection, enhance resection accuracy, and improve treatment outcome. -
J. Bradley Zuchero
Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsGlia are a frontier of neuroscience, and overwhelming evidence from the last decade shows that they are essential regulators of all aspects of the nervous system. The Zuchero Lab aims to uncover how glial cells regulate neural development and how their dysfunction contributes to diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) and in injuries like stroke.
Although glia represent more than half of the cells in the human brain, fundamental questions remain to be answered. How do glia develop their highly specialized morphologies and interact with neurons to powerfully control form and function of the nervous system? How is this disrupted in neurodegenerative diseases and after injury? By bringing cutting-edge cell biology techniques to the study of glia, we aim to uncover how glia help sculpt and regulate the nervous system and test their potential as novel, untapped therapeutic targets for disease and injury.
We are particularly interested in myelin, the insulating sheath around neuronal axons that is lost in diseases like MS. How do oligodendrocytes- the glial cell that produces myelin in the central nervous system- form and remodel myelin, and why do they fail to regenerate myelin in disease? Our current projects aim to use cell biology and neuroscience approaches to answer these fundamental questions. Ultimately we hope our work will lead to much-needed therapies to promote remyelination in patients. -
Corinna Zygourakis
Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy goal is to translate research into real-world action and decision-making so that my work can impact patients and the institutions in which they receive care. With a research focus on healthcare cost and quality of care, I approach neurosurgery in a unique way—one that applies business operations, economics, and healthcare delivery principles to our field. I have pursued formal LEAN business training, and believe in the importance of working together with other departments and administrators, as well as physicians and surgeons on the hospital and national level, to effect change. During my residency, I developed and led a multi-departmental prospective study at UCSF called OR SCORE (OR Surgical Cost Reduction Project) that brought together surgeons from the neurosurgery, orthopedics and ENT departments with nurses and administrators. OR SCORE successfully reduced surgical supply costs by nearly one million dollars in its first year by providing >60 surgeons with price transparency scorecards. This work led to a first-author publication in JAMA Surgery, but more importantly, set the foundation for further quality improvement and cost reduction efforts across the UCSF hospital system.
A volunteer neurosurgical mission trip to Guadalajara, Mexico, where limited resources create an OR environment that is strikingly more frugal than the U.S., inspired me to lead another project aimed at quantifying and reducing operating room waste at UCSF. I have also conducted research looking at the safety and outcomes of overlapping surgery, as well as several projects to define the factors underlying variation in cost for neurosurgical care using UCSF’s hospital data and national databases like the National Inpatient Sample, Vizient (formerly known as University Health Consortium), and Medicare.
As a clinical fellow at Johns Hopkins, I continued and expanded these research efforts. I designed and implemented an Enhanced Recovery after Surgery (ERAS) protocol at the Johns Hopkins Bayview hospital. This protocol standardized care for our spine patients, emphasizing pre-operative rehabilitation, psychiatric and nutritional assessments, and smoking cessation, as well as intra- and post-operative multi-modal pain therapy, early mobilization, and standardized antibiotic and bowel regimens. I also collaborated with engineers in the Johns Hopkins Carnegie Center for Surgical Innovation to develop better algorithms for intra-operative CT imaging, and provided assistance with operations to a basic science study looking at the role of cerebrospinal fluid drainage and duraplasty in a porcine model of spinal cord injury.
At Stanford, I am building a research group focused on: (1) perfecting paradigms for delivery of high-end technology in spinal care, including robotics and navigation, (2) implementing cost and quality strategies in large healthcare systems, and (3) computational analysis of big-data to effect real-time risk stratification and decision making in spine surgery. I'm excited to collaborate with my peers across surgical and medical departments, as well as business and engineering colleagues.
