Fred Lam, MD
Assistant Professor, Neurosurgery
Biography
Fred C. Lam, MD, PhD, FRCSC, is an Assistant Professor in Neurosurgery at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA. He is an attending neurosurgeon at St Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton, MA, USA as well as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Dr. Lam is a neurosurgeon-scientist with an interest in improving the survival of patients with primary and secondary brain tumors. His postdoctoral research combines molecular and systems biology approaches to discovering novel therapeutic targets in cancer cells that can be applied in rational combinations. In collaboration with mentors in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at MIT, Dr. Lam developed nanocarriers that can cross the blood-brain barrier to deliver a variety of different types of pay load to brain tumors. As a neurosurgeon, Dr. Lam is interested in developing theranostic tools that can enhance intraoperative imaging of brain tumors and simultaneously deliver novel targeted therapies to tumor cells in order to improve surgical outcomes and enhance peri-operative adjuvant therapies. He is also interested in addressing the disparities in access to novel treatments for cancer patients in order to improve their survival outcomes.
Dr. Lam received his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, where he discovered that the ABC transporter multi-drug resistance efflux pump, p-glycoprotein, is a bona fide transporter of A peptides, the key component in toxic amyloid plaques which are thought to be one of the main mechanisms causing neurodegeneration in the brains of Alzheimer’s Disease patients. His discovery was patented by the US and World Patent Offices, led to the founding of a biotechnology company called Active Pass Pharmaceuticals, and has inspired laboratories around the world to continue investigating the role of ABC transporters as therapeutic targets for the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Dr. Lam pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA, where he studied how cancer cells repair damaged DNA in response to ionizing radiation and different classes of small molecular inhibitors used in the treatment of brain tumors in the Yaffe Lab. In collaboration with the Hammond Lab in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT, Dr. Lam helped to develop nanocarriers that can cross the blood-brain barrier to deliver novel combination therapies in mouse models of glioblastoma, the most aggressive and deadliest primary brain in adults. In collaboration with the Belcher Lab in the Department of Bioengineering at MIT, he helped to develop a theranostic nanocarrier that can be used to detect and deliver multimodal therapies to treat gliomas in mouse models.
Prior to his position as an attending neurosurgeon at St Elizabeth’s Medical Center, Dr. Lam was a Clinical Scholar in the Division of Neurosurgery at Hamilton General Hospital, McMaster University Faculty of Health Sciences in Hamilton, Ontario, where he took care of brain tumor patients and conducted research in brain metastasis in the Singh Lab at the McMaster Cancer Research Center, Hamilton, Ontario. During his tenure as a Clinical Scholar in the Division of Neurosurgery, he helped the Singh Lab spearhead an organ donation program for patients with gliomas who wanted to donate their brain and spine for research purposes.
Dr. Lam is a member of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, the Society for Neuro-Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Canadian Neurosurgical Society, the Radiosurgical Society, and the Subcortical Surgery Group.
Education
- University of British Columbia, MD
- University of British Columbia, PhD
- University of British Columbia, BSc
Publications
- Published on 7/29/2024
Kaya S, Lam FC, Stevenson MA, Motiei-Langroudi R, Kasper EM. Intramedullary Metastases to Conus Medullaris: A Review of the Literature with a Case Illustration. Brain Sci. 2024 Jul 29; 14(8). PMID: 39199455.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 9/28/2023
Riggs J, Ahn H, Longmoore H, Jardim P, Kim MJ, Kasper EM, Han J, Lam FC. Addressing disparities in delivery of cancer care for patients with melanoma brain metastases-Not just a simple case of rurality. Neurooncol Adv. 2023; 5(1):vdad113. PMID: 37860268.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 8/25/2023
Power RG, Lam FC, Whitton AC, Sharma S, Kasper EM. Surgical Management of Meningiomas Involving the Torcula, Transverse Sinus, and Jugular Bulb: A Technical Note and Review of the Literature. J Neurol Surg Rep. 2023 Jul; 84(3):e92-e102. PMID: 37635841.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 6/1/2023
Kasper EM, Mirza FA, Kaya S, Walker R, Starnoni D, Daniel RT, Nair R, Lam FC. Surgical Morbidity in Relation to the Surgical Approach for Olfactory Groove Meningiomas-A Pooled Analysis of 1016 Patients and Proposal of a New Reporting System. Brain Sci. 2023 Jun 01; 13(6). PMID: 37371375.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 10/31/2022
Christ SM, Farhadi DS, Junzhao S, Mahadevan A, Thormann M, Lam FC, Yu X, Kasper EM. Efficacy and Safety of Primary Stereotactic Radiosurgery in Patients With Intraventricular Meningiomas. Adv Radiat Oncol. 2023; 8(1):101098. PMID: 36407683.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 8/30/2022
Shao C, Wan J, Lam FC, Tang H, Marley AR, Song Y, Miller C, Brown M, Han J, Adeboyeje G. A comprehensive literature review and meta-analysis of the prevalence of pan-cancer BRCA mutations, homologous recombination repair gene mutations, and homologous recombination deficiencies. Environ Mol Mutagen. 2022 Jul; 63(6):308-316. PMID: 36054589.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 7/22/2022
Lam FC. Editorial: Nano-Imaging in Translational Cancer Medicine. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022; 10:969430. PMID: 35935484.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 7/20/2022
Shao C, Chang MS, Lam FC, Marley AR, Tang H, Song Y, Miller C, Brown M, Wan I, Han J, Adeboyeje G. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on the Prognostic Value of BRCA Mutations, Homologous Recombination Gene Mutations, and Homologous Recombination Deficiencies in Cancer. J Oncol. 2022; 2022:5830475. PMID: 35909902.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 7/13/2022
Tsedev U, Lin CW, Hess GT, Sarkaria JN, Lam FC, Belcher AM. Phage Particles of Controlled Length and Genome for In Vivo Targeted Glioblastoma Imaging and Therapeutic Delivery. ACS Nano. 2022 Aug 23; 16(8):11676-11691. PMID: 35830573.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 7/12/2022
Lam FC, Tsedev U, Kasper EM, Belcher AM. Forging the Frontiers of Image-Guided Neurosurgery-The Emerging Uses of Theranostics in Neurosurgical Oncology. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022; 10:857093. PMID: 35903794.
Read at: PubMed
View 33 more publications: View full profile at BUMC