Howard A. Fine, M.D., is the laboratory’s principal investigator, the Louis and Gertrude Feil Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, founding director of the Brain Tumor Center, and chief of the Division of Neuro-Oncology. A physician-scientist with more than three decades of laboratory and clinical research experience, he has built multidisciplinary neuro-oncology programs at Dana-Farber/Harvard and the National Institutes of Health and held senior cancer-program leadership roles at NYU before joining Weill Cornell.
His research has focused on developing experimental systems that better represent human glioblastoma and using those systems to investigate mechanisms of treatment resistance. The laboratory’s work progressed from patient-derived glioma stem-like cells to the GLICO platform and studies of tumor–brain interactions, cellular plasticity, and regulatory organization. His organoid research received a 2017 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. His current scientific direction emphasizes glioblastoma as an adaptive, brain-integrated disease and the identification of functions that residual tumor cannot readily restore after treatment.
Dr. Fine maintains an active neuro-oncology practice and a longstanding commitment to mentoring scientists and physician-scientists. Within the laboratory, he emphasizes independent scientific judgment, mechanistic experimentation, and the ability to connect a molecular finding to a consequential question in human disease.