Jawad Fares


Jawad Youssef Fares is a Lebanese physician-scientist in neurosurgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University. He is known for his work in translational neuro-oncology, particularly in developing therapeutic and molecular approaches for brain tumors.

Early life

Fares was born in 1991 in Madrid, Spain, and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. He completed a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Doctor of Medicine at the American University of Beirut, and a Master of Science in Neuropsychology from the Lebanese University.
In 2018, Fares relocated to the United States, where he pursued a postgraduate program in Cancer Biology and Therapeutics at Harvard Medical School. He subsequently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in brain tumor biology and gene therapy at Northwestern University in the laboratory of Maciej Lesniak, before continuing his neurosurgery training at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Research

Fares’s research primarily focuses on neuro-oncology, molecular biology, and translational medicine, following earlier contributions to the study of injury and health outcomes in conflict settings.

Neuro-oncology and translational therapeutics

Fares’s research in neuro-oncology bridges molecular discovery with translational and clinical investigation to advance therapies for gliomas and brain metastasis. He has been part of multidisciplinary efforts to redefine brain metastasis as a primary disease of the central nervous system, emphasizing the molecular divergence of intracranial metastases from their systemic counterparts and the therapeutic implications of that distinction. His work, published in The Lancet Oncology, proposed a new conceptual framework for studying and treating brain metastases as distinct entities within oncology.
At Northwestern University, Fares has contributed to the first-in-human gene therapy trial using neural-stem-cell–based delivery of an oncolytic adenovirus for malignant glioma, a milestone study demonstrating the safety and biological activity of targeted viral therapy within the human brain. His translational work also encompasses biomarker-guided drug repurposing and small-molecule therapeutics, including studies identifying metixene as a potential treatment for metastatic cancers such as breast, lung, and melanoma, as well as their brain metastases, through modulation of the NDRG1 pathway and induction of incomplete autophagy.

Conflict medicine and injury research

Earlier in his career, Fares studied the medical and psychological consequences of armed conflict, focusing on civilian injuries caused by cluster munitions in Lebanon. He analyzed trauma patterns, amputations, and long-term functional outcomes among survivors, and developed the Fares Scale of Injuries due to Cluster Munitions to classify injury severity and distribution. His work provided one of the first comprehensive assessments of the public health impact of cluster munitions and helped advance the study of health outcomes in populations affected by war.

Honors

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