Viviane S. Tabar, MD
Photo: Viviane Tabar

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Elected 2014

Viviane Tabar is a neurosurgeon and scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). She received clinical training at the University of Massachusetts and at Memorial Sloan Kettering and research training at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke/NIH. She is currently an attending member in the department of neurosurgery at MSKCC and holds a joint appointment at Weill Cornell Medical College in the departments of Neurosurgery and Neuroscience. Her clinical practice is focused on the surgical management of brain and skull base tumors, with special emphasis on complex glioma surgery, intraoperative brain mapping, and pituitary tumors; she also directs the MSKCC multidisciplinary skull base and pituitary center. Work in the Tabar laboratory is focused on two main themes: the use of pluripotent stem cells for translational purposes in the central nervous system and the study of brain cancer using a stem cell platform. She serves as a co-PI of a large consortium grant aiming at the development of a clinical trial for grafting human embryonic stem cell–derived dopamine neurons in Parkinson patients and has focused major efforts on the development of human ES-derived oligodendrocytes for brain radiation damage. Work on brain tumors in the lab is also inspired by stem cell biology. Recent work from the lab has shown evidence for significant heterogeneity and lineage transitions among cancer stem cells in glioblastoma. The lab has also pioneered the use of human ES cells as a platform for modeling cancer, starting with pediatric gliomas carrying histone mutations. Dr. Tabar is the director of the Neurosurgical Oncology fellowship program at MSKCC, and was recently appointed vice Chair for Research and Education in the department of Neurosurgery.

Honors / awards

National Academy of Medicine (2017)