Immunotherapy for Brain Tumors

Immunotherapy, refers to an array of treatment strategies based upon the concept of modulating the immune system to achieve a prophylactic and/or therapeutic goal.

Dr. Linda M. Liau is a neurosurgeon and Professor of Neurosurgery at the UCLA School of Medicine. She is Director of the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program and Director of Neurosurgical Oncology at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Liau received her B.S. degree in Biochemistry and B.A. degree in Political Science, both with honors, from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island in 1987. She then received her M.D. degree from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California in 1991, and a Ph.D. degree in Molecular Neuroscience from UCLA in Los Angeles, California in 1999.

After completing her residency and fellowship training in neurosurgery at UCLA, she joined the faculty at the UCLA School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery in 1998. She was granted tenure at UCLA in 2003 and was promoted to Associate Professor of Neurosurgery. She is currently a board-certified neurosurgeon with both an active research laboratory and a busy clinical practice in the field of brain tumors and neurosurgical oncology. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons and the Tumor Section of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. She currently serves as a member of the NIH Clinical Neuroimmunolgoy and Brain Tumor (CNBT) study section, is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Goldhirsh Foundation and the General Advisory Committee of the National Brain Tumor Foundation. She is currently Chairman of the Fellowship Awards committee of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. Dr. Liau serves as Principal Investigator on two NIH R01 grants, and is the mentor for several NIH training grants (K01, K12, T32) for postdoctoral fellows in her laboratory. Her research interests include translational experimental therapeutics of cell-based therapies for brain tumors and characterization of molecular targets involved in brain tumor pathogenesis and progression. She has published dozens of peer-reviewed research articles, along with several book chapters and a textbook entitled Brain Tumor Immunotherapy (Humana Press, 2001). She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neuro-Oncology and is on the editorial boards of Neurosurgery, Surgical Neurology, and Neuro-Oncology.