Nader Sanai, MD

Chief, Neurosurgical Oncology
Director, Ivy Brain Tumor Center

• (602) 406-3181
• Fax: (602) 406-6110

Ivy Brain Tumor Center

Accepting New Patients

Nader Sanai, MD, is the Francis & Dionne Najafi Chair in Neurosurgical Oncology at 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 oversees all brain tumor research at Barrow Neurological Institute. In 2018, he founded and directs the Ivy Brain Tumor Center, a not-for-profit drug development program for brain tumor patients. Its precision medicine program is the first of its kind worldwide and it specializes in clinical trials designed to accelerate drug development. The Ivy Center includes more than 50 scientists, clinicians, and clinical trial specialists and is a world leader in designing experimental treatments for brain cancer. 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 13 countries.

Dr. Sanai’s brain tumor research is funded by more than a dozen external granting agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), as well as foundational support from the Ben & Catherine Ivy Foundation. 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 300 national and international lectures in neuro-oncology. Collectively, Dr. Sanai’s published research has led to more than 30,000 total citations in academic literature.

Please call (602) 406-3181 to request an appointment with Dr. Sanai.