Neurosurgeon-Scientist Gelareh Zadeh Wins Canada Gairdner Momentum Award

A University of Toronto professor at University Health Network has been recognized with a 2023 Canada Gairdner Award, for her research on the classification and treatment of brain tumours.

Gelareh Zadeh (PGME '06 Neurosurgery) is one of two winners of the inaugural Momentum Awards, created by the Gairdner Foundation to recognize mid-career researchers who have made significant discoveries with the potential to improve human health.

“It is such an honour to receive this award from the Gairdner Foundation,” said Zadeh, a professor of surgery at University Health Network, where she is also a clinician and senior scientist.

“I attribute my success in large part to the highly skilled and integrated research and clinical teams that I work with at University Health Network. My team’s achievements in translational brain research simply would not be possible without the exceptional researchers, trainees, neuro-oncologists, surgical teams and patients that we work with every day,” Zadeh said.

The Gairdners are Canada’s most prestigious honour for health-related research, and have developed a reputation since their inception in 1957 as a precursor to the Nobel Prize, with roughly a quarter of Gairdner recipients later winning a Nobel.

Zadeh was recognized for her contributions to the understanding of brain tumours. Her work has led to a new molecular classification of one of the most common types of brain tumours — meningiomas — an advance that could produce more effective treatments, models for predicting patient outcomes and biomarkers of treatment response.

Her research integrates molecular, genomic and epigenomic techniques, together with experimental models of brain tumours, to accelerate translational research.

Zadeh has also spearheaded international efforts to define the genomic landscape of neuronal tumours that have not been the focus of significant biological research, including schwannomas, peripheral nerve tumours and malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumours. These efforts have revealed novel fusion proteins and resulted in the molecular sub-classification of schwannomas.

Additionally, her team has identified two biological pathways that drive the progression of benign peripheral nerve tumours toward malignant sarcomas. These molecular pathways provide a better biological understanding of tumour transformation, but also offer targets that could be used to develop therapeutic strategies including the repurposing of existing pharmaceuticals.

In collaboration with researchers at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Zadeh has also advanced the development of blood-based biomarkers that can help discriminate among different brain tumour types and potentially to track response to therapy and early recurrence of disease.

Zadeh holds the Dan Family Chair in the division of neurosurgery at U of T’s department of surgery, part of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, and is the first woman in Canada to be named neurosurgery chair. She is also the head of neurosurgery at Toronto Western Hospital and co-director of the Krembil Brain Institute, and leads a 30-member research team at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.

Her other prestigious honours include the William E. Rawls Prize from the Canadian Cancer Society, the Top 25 Women of Influence Award, and the Ab Guha Award jointly awarded by the Society of Neuro-Oncology and American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

The Gairdner Momentum Award comes with a $50,000 prize and will be presented during Gairdner Science Week in October 2023.

This story is based on a news release from University Health Network.