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The University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine recently announced the appointment of neurosurgeon Ashish H. Shah, M.D. to the newly created position of Director of Clinical Trials and Translational Research in the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Brain Tumor Initiative (BTI).
According to Ricardo J. Komotar, M.D., director of the Sylvester BTI and professor of neurological surgery at the Miller School of Medicine, Dr. Shah and his team will focus on the highly aggressive glioblastoma type of brain tumor, which represents about half of all malignant brain tumors. Although nearly all glioblastoma tumors recur following removal, thanks to innovative approaches taken at the BTI, patients treated there have some of the best outcomes in the country.
“Our lab focuses on studying the interplay between viruses and cancer,” explains Dr. Shah. “A key component of our research is advancing our understanding of how viruses affect brain cancer and how to improve our immune responses against these malignant tumors.”
Dr. Shah is keenly prepared for his new role, having performed some of the most complex brain tumor surgeries and authored scores of papers on novel therapies and treatment approaches. He sees a focus on viruses associated with brain tumors, and glioblastoma in particular, as fundamental to understanding and ultimately curing this complex type of cancer.
Simply stated, viral-based gene therapy uses viruses to deliver genes into cancer cells and, by changing their fundamental genome, make them more susceptible to cancer treatments. Along with colleagues, Dr. Shah is working to develop virotherapy that involves delivering tumor-selective “suicide genes,” using a novel replicating retrovirus. He has also recently discovered a key role of endogenous retroviruses in glioblastoma development.
“The treatments we have to date have failed. Now we are working to harness the body’s immune system to recognize these tumors and fight them off,” explains Dr. Shah. “Potentiating the immune response against brain tumors is critical. On the one hand, we’re trying to find out which viruses are causing the cancer, and on the other, we’re trying to use viruses to treat cancer.”
A self-described “quadruple ‘Cane,” Dr. Shah earned his undergraduate degree, completed medical school and his residency as a faculty member at the University of Miami. His new position at the BTI follows a year-long fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where he focused on clinical trial design and translational neuro-oncology.
His is the classic American Dream story. In 1983, Dr. Shah’s parents migrated to the United States and made a new start; his father became a civil engineer and his mother a teacher in their adopted hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas. Dr. Shah was accepted into the University of Miami’s Honors Program in Medicine, and has been practicing in Miami ever since. Dr. Shah’s brother is a medical doctor as well.
When asked what inspired him to enter the highly stressful realm of neurosurgery, Dr. Shah has an immediate answer.
“I became interested in neurosurgery in rural Haiti, which I visited on several trips as an undergraduate student with a Miami-based organization called Project Medishare,” he says. “While down there helping provide basic healthcare to vulnerable families, I met Dr. Barth Green, chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Miami and a man devoted to caring for underserved communities globally. I wanted to be exactly like him, and that fueled my interest in neurosurgery.”
Because he is a philosopher as well as a physician, Dr. Shah admits another reason for becoming a neurosurgeon.
“There is a famous Haitian proverb that goes like this: ‘Beyond mountains, there are more mountains,’” he says. “Neurosurgery is exactly like that…an extremely difficult field where every time you encounter one hurdle, there is another ahead of you. Neurosurgery has pushed me to be the best version of myself.”
