Professor, Department of Neurological Surgery, Hematology/Oncology and Winship Cancer Institute
Director, Laboratory of Molecular Neuro-Oncology and Brain Tumor Program



1365C Clifton Rd., NE, C5078
Atlanta, GA 30322, USA
Phone: 404-778-5563
Fax: 404-778-5240
Email: evanmei@emory.edu
Faculty Page

Dr. Van Meir received his B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Fribourg and his Ph.D. in Molecular Virology from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He went for postdoctoral training in Molecular Neuro-Oncology at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in San Diego where he studied the genomics of the p53 tumor suppressor in astrocytic tumors.

>His major research interests are in the area of brain tumor biology and genetics. He has authored over 100 scientific publications on this topic, is a reviewer for the leading cancer research journals, is a current member of the editorial board of Frontiers in Bioscience, Neuro-Oncology and International Journal of Oncology, and is a former associate editor for the International Journal of Cancer.

Dr. Van Meir is currently the Director of the Winship Cancer Institute Brain Tumor Program and the Laboratory of Molecular Neuro-Oncology. The laboratory is located at the Winship Cancer Institute on the Emory Campus, and is part of a multidisciplinary neuro-oncology team aimed at designing new approaches for brain tumor therapy. He has trained multiple undergraduate and graduate students, medical fellows and postdocs and is a member of the Graduate Division of Biological and Biochemical Sciences at Emory, where he participates in the programs in Genetics and Molecular Biology and in Biochemistry, Cell and Developmental Biology. He is active in several scientific societies including the American Society for Neuro-Oncology and the European Association for Neuro-Oncology.

Program Leadership

Dr. Van Meir has been an active member of the international neuro-oncology community for 16 years, has organized several international conferences on this topic, serves on the Scientific Committee of the European Association for Neuro-Oncology, the Scientific Advisory Board of the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation and serves on the Editorial Board of Neuro-Oncology. He is as reviewer for brain tumor grants on the NIH and DOD study sections. His research is mainly directed at defining the genetic alterations in brain tumors, determining their biological significance for tumor development with particular emphasis on angiogenesis and hypoxia, and utilizing this knowledge to devise new therapeutic approaches. His work contributed to the understanding of loss of p53 function during astrocytoma formation and provided the first evidence for the existence of a precursor lesion to low grade astrocytoma in humans. He has also uncovered the role of the p53 tumor suppressor gene in the regulation of an inhibitor of angiogenesis in glioma, demonstrated that hypoxia can increase the production of angiogenic chemokine IL-8, and showed that hypoxia reduces the production of inhibitors of angiogenesis such as thrombospondin-1. Realizing that tumor hypoxia was both a major physiological inducer of angiogenesis and an important cause for chemo- and radio-resistance he devised a conditionally replicative adenovirus that can only lyse hypoxic cells, showed its anti-tumor activity and is developing it further for clinical trial. More recently, he developed new small molecule inhibitors of Hypoxia-Induced Factor-1 (HIF-1), which have potent anti-tumor activities. His research is described in more than 180 peer-reviewed articles in international journals that have accumulated over 3000 citations. These contributions have also furthered the understanding of Turcot syndrome, CNS germ cell tumors and cytokine expression for glioma biology.