Griffith Harsh

In addition to his professorial duties throughout his 30-year career as a neurosurgeon and neuro-oncologist, Griffith Harsh, MD, has participated in scientific research. During his residency in neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, he joined the Brain Tumor Research Center as a research fellow, where he studied brain tumors and received a $30,000 training grant from the Biomedical Technology Resource Centers. When he began his fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Harsh received a $20,000 research award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons for his investigation into platelet-derived growth factor’s contribution to glial tumors. After his fellowship, he continued study of growth factors in brain tumorigenesis while supported by a $350,000 Clinical Investigator Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. Over the next several years, Dr. Griffith Harsh also received funding from Elekta AB and Nova Pharmaceutical Corporation to analyze radiological models for radiosurgery and polymer implants for gliomas, respectively.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Griffith Harsh moved to Boston to accept positions at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He established a molecular neuro-oncology laboratory which investigated new types of brain tumor therapy with funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The NCI awarded this program project over $4 million to study the treatment of brain tumors with gene therapy. Dr. Harsh’s role as Co-Principal Investigator was to conduct preclinical and clinical trials. He then moved to Stanford University School of Medicine and Stanford University Medical Center in California.

At the Palo Alto facilities, Dr. Griffith Harsh has garnered mentorship awards in recognition of his research with students into integrins on endothelia of glioblastoma multiforme and nanoparticle delivery of antiangiogenic gene therapy. Currently, the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute support this effort through an R25 grant.