BG 10 RM 3D20
10 CENTER DR
BETHESDA MD 20814
Dr. Edjah Nduom is a fellowship-trained neurosurgical oncologist who joined the faculty as a Staff Clinician in August 2015, and became an Assistant Clinical investigator in 2019. In 2020, Dr. Nduom joined the staff of Emory University as an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery. Dr. Nduom obtained his B.S. in Biomechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 2002 and subsequently obtained his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. He then pursued Neurosurgical training in the Department of Neurosurgery at Emory University. During residency, he was awarded an NIH R25 Research Development Grant to study the delivery of nanoparticles to the brain for the treatment of brain tumors with Costas Hadjipanayis, M.D., Ph.D.
He completed an in-folded Research Fellowship in Neurosurgical Oncology with Dr. Russell Lonser in the Surgical Neurology Branch in 2012. There, he focused on convection-enhanced delivery for drug delivery to the brain and the characterization of the blood-brain barrier of malignant brain lesions. Dr. Nduom completed his neurosurgical training in 2013 and then pursued an additional Neurosurgical Oncology Fellowship at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, where he was awarded the Jesse H. Jones Fellowship in Cancer Education. While at MD Anderson, Dr. Nduom spent a year in the laboratory of Amy Heimberger, M.D., studying microRNAs with immune modulatory properties for the treatment of brain tumors. In his second year, he obtained further training in the resection of brain and spinal tumors under the tutelage of Raymond Sawaya, M.D. and Jeffrey Weinberg, M.D.
Dr. Nduom’s clinical specialty is the surgical management of brain and spinal cord tumors, and he is particularly interested in the safe resection of malignant tumors located in eloquent areas of the brain, the brainstem and spinal cord. His research focuses on the modulation of the immune system for the treatment of malignant brain tumors.
Dr. Nduom’s work attempts to harness the power of the immune system to fight brain tumors. The immune system is the body’s primary way of fighting off infections, but it is also constantly monitoring the cells of our bodies for abnormalities. In this way, the immune system is also the front line of defense against the abnormal cells of cancer. Unfortunately, many cancers have found ways to hide themselves from the immune system. In the attached figure, you can see the many ways that brain tumors send signals that shut down the effector T cells that the immune system sends to fight tumors.
