Manmeet S. Ahluwalia, M.D., is the chief scientific officer, chief of medical oncology, deputy director, and Fernandez Family Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at Baptist Health Miami Cancer Institute.
As a neuro-oncologist, Dr. Ahluwalia’s main areas of research and patient care are primary brain tumors (tumors originating in the brain that can be cancerous or noncancerous) and brain metastases (cancers that originate elsewhere in the body and spread to the brain).
Dr. Ahluwalia earned his medical degree from Maulana Azad Medical College, University of Delhi, and trained in internal medicine at Cleveland Clinic and in hematology-oncology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. He later became the Miller Family Endowed Chair in Neuro-Oncology and a professor at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. In 2020, he earned an MBA in healthcare management from Case Western Reserve University and soon after joined Miami Cancer Institute to build South Florida’s most extensive cancer programme.
For over a decade, he has led practice-changing research for developing new therapies for patients with primary brain tumors and brain metastases, resulting in his 250+ peer-reviewed papers. He designed and led the initial studies on combining immunotherapy/targeted therapy and radiosurgery in brain metastases.
He co-led the first-in-man trial of Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy (LITT) for primary brain tumors, which led to US FDA approval. He also designed and led the LASSR trial exploring LITT for brain metastases and radiation necrosis, and authored the landmark paper describing the Phase II trial of SurVaxM for glioblastoma in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Dr. Ahluwalia has received several prestigious awards, including the Fellowship of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the National Cancer Institute/Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program Career Development Award via the American Brain Tumor Consortium Career (ABTC), ASCO Leadership Development Program, the 2023 Most Distinguished Physician Award from the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), among others. He is fluent in English, Hindi and Punjabi.