Manish Aghi, MD, PhD, MAS

Manish Aghi is a neurosurgeon and scientist at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He completed his MD-PhD degrees through the MSTP program at Harvard Medical School, followed by neurological surgery residency and postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is currently faculty in the department of neurological surgery and graduate division of biomedical sciences, as well as a principal investigator in the Brain Tumor Research Center at UCSF. His clinical practice is focused on the surgical management of brain and skull base tumors, with special emphasis on intraoperative brain mapping for glioma surgery, pituitary tumor surgery, and minimally invasive endoscopic skull base surgery. Work in the Aghi laboratory has been funded by NIH and private foundations since 2008 and is focused on the role of tumor-microenvironment interactions in driving aggressive biology and therapeutic resistance in benign and malignant brain tumors like pituitary adenomas and gliomas. Active areas of research include the role of tumor-associated macrophages in glioblastoma growth, whole genome sequencing of pituitary adenomas, metabolic changes occurring after anti-angiogenic therapy in glioblastoma, and the role of a tyrosine kinase-integrin receptor complex in driving invasive resistance in glioblastoma. He serves as PI on multiple industry sponsored and investigator-initiated phase I-II clinical trials comparing immunotherapy versus anti-angiogenic theray of recurrent glioblastoma, as well as investigating convection-enhanced delivery of oncolytic viruses and nanoliposomal chemotherapy to recurrent glioblastoma.