Sunit Das

MD, PhD, MA, BA

Scientist

Biography

Sunit Das is a neurosurgeon and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital and the Hospital for Sick Kids, and Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto. He currently serves as the CNS Tumours Lead at Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario). Dr. Das studied English Literature at the University of Michigan and Philosophy at Harvard University before moving to Chicago for medical school at Northwestern University. He completed his doctoral studies in Neurobiology at the National Institutes of Health, where he studied the molecular processes that underlie adult neurogenesis in the lab of Dr. ZuHang Sheng. He returned to Chicago for his neurosurgical residency, during which time he also began work on cancer stem cells in primary brain tumours in the lab of Dr. John Kessler. He was recruited to the University of Toronto in 2010. Dr. Das’s clinical practice is focused on the care of patients with benign and malignant brain tumours. His laboratory in the Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumour Centre at the Hospital for Sick Kids focuses on the molecular and genetic mechanisms that regulate cellular plasticity, fate specification and treatment resistance in glioblastoma. His research group at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute is focused on using real-world data and meta-analysis for knowledge translation. His work has been published in many high impact journals, including Nature, Nature Genetics, Cell Stem Cell, Cancer Cell, JAMA, JAMA Neurology, and the New England Journal of Medicine. In 2017, Dr. Das joined the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto. His work at the Centre for Ethics focuses on the interface of AI with medicine, issues that underlie professional identity in medical practice, and the ethics of surgical innovation. Dr. Das was recently named a Senior Fellow at Massey College.

Recent Publications

  1. Mofatteh, M, Mashayekhi, MS, Arfaie, S, Wei, H, Kazerouni, A, Skandalakis, GP et al.. Awake craniotomy during pregnancy: A systematic review of the published literature. Neurosurg Rev. 2023;46 (1):290. doi: 10.1007/s10143-023-02187-x. PubMed PMID:37910275 PubMed Central PMC10620271.
  2. Premachandran, S, Dhinakaran, AK, Das, S, Venkatakrishnan, K, Tan, B, Sharma, M et al.. Detection of lung cancer metastasis from blood using L-MISC nanosensor: Targeting circulating metastatic cues for improved diagnosis. Biosens Bioelectron. 2024;243 :115782. doi: 10.1016/j.bios.2023.115782. PubMed PMID:37890388 .
  3. Premachandran, S, Haldavnekar, R, Ganesh, S, Das, S, Venkatakrishnan, K, Tan, B et al.. Self-Functionalized Superlattice Nanosensor Enables Glioblastoma Diagnosis Using Liquid Biopsy. ACS Nano. 2023;17 (20):19832-19852. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.3c04118. PubMed PMID:37824714 .
  4. Anthes, VB, Schwartz, M, Cusimano, M, Radovanovic, I, Kulkarni, AV, Laperriere, N et al.. Effect of Cobalt-60 Treatment Dose Rate on Arteriovenous Malformation Obliteration After Stereotactic Radiosurgery With Gamma Knife. Neurosurgery. 2023; :. doi: 10.1227/neu.0000000000002701. PubMed PMID:37796152 .
  5. Zeng, KL, Soliman, H, Myrehaug, S, Tseng, CL, Detsky, J MD, Chen, H MD et al.. Dose-Escalated Radiation Therapy Is Associated With Improved Outcomes for High-Grade Meningioma. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2023; :. doi: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2023.09.026. PubMed PMID:37793575 .
  6. Katz, L, Kiyota, T, Woolman, M, Wu, M, Pires, L, Fiorante, A et al.. Metabolic Lipids in Melanoma Enable Rapid Determination of Actionable BRAF-V600E Mutation with Picosecond Infrared Laser Mass Spectrometry in 10 s. Anal Chem. 2023;95 (38):14430-14439. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c02901. PubMed PMID:37695851 .
  7. Cho, M, McCoy, LG, Brenna, CTA, Das, S. Beyond Words: Reconsidering the Moral Distinction of Action in Consent for Assisted Dying. Am J Bioeth. 2023;23 (9):25-27. doi: 10.1080/15265161.2023.2237453. PubMed PMID:37647476 .
  8. Lawrence, LSP, Chan, RW, Chen, H, Stewart, J, Ruschin, M, Theriault, A et al.. Diffusion-weighted imaging on an MRI-linear accelerator to identify adversely prognostic tumour regions in glioblastoma during chemoradiation. Radiother Oncol. 2023;188 :109873. doi: 10.1016/j.radonc.2023.109873. PubMed PMID:37640160 .
  9. Wang, JZ, Nassiri, F, Landry, AP, Patil, V, Rebchuk, A, Merali, ZA et al.. Fractionated radiotherapy for surgically resected intracranial meningiomas: A multicentre retrospective cohort study. Radiother Oncol. 2023;188 :109861. doi: 10.1016/j.radonc.2023.109861. PubMed PMID:37619659 .
  10. Moore-Palhares, D, Chen, H, Keith, J, Wang, M, Myrehaug, S, Tseng, CL et al.. Correction to: Re-irradiation for recurrent high-grade glioma: an analysis of prognostic factors for survival and predictors of radiation necrosis. J Neurooncol. 2023;163 (3):553. doi: 10.1007/s11060-023-04364-w. PubMed PMID:37378836 .
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Affiliations & Other Activities

  • Associate Professor, Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, St. Michael’s Hospital
  • Adjunct Scientist, Brain Tumour Research Centre, Hospital for Sick Children