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Neurosurgery Breakthroughs Championed by Dr. Linda Liau
By James Moreau | 23 Jun, 2025
Dr. Linda Liau transformed brain cancer treatment through groundbreaking work in immunotherapy and neurosurgery.
Revolutionary work in brain cancer immunotherapy has made Dr. Linda Liau a distinguished figure in neurosurgery.
In the late 1990s Liau pioneered one of the first personalized vaccines to treat glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. This approach uses a patient’s own tumor and white blood cells to boost immune response. The method has continued to evolve through numerous clinical trials and is now credited with doubling the 5-year survival rate.
The 2,000 brain tumor surgeries she has performed has made Liau an eminent figure who attracts patients from around the world. In 2013 she was elected to the Society of Neurological Surgeons, and in 2018, to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine.
Liau became the second woman in the U.S. and the first Asian American woman to head a university neurosurgical department in 2017 when she was appointed to chair UCLA’s department of neurosurgery. Her total annual compensation for the 23-year UCLA Health veteran is listed at over $1.3 million.
Liau’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health for over two decades, resulting in over 230 published articles and the 2000 textbook Brain Tumor Immunotherapy.
She is listed as an inventor on 4 U.S. patents related to methods to detect and treat neural cancers, including the individually tailored glioblastoma vaccine.
Further demonstrating her commitment to advancing the field of neuro-oncology Liau served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neuro-Oncology from 2007 to 2017.
Linda was raised in Los Angeles by parents who emigrated from Taiwan. At age 16 she enrolled at Brown University where she earned bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry and political science in 1987. After completing medical school in 1991 at Stanford she completed her residency at UCLA Medical School in six years before joining its faculty in 1998. Since then her academic pursuits at UCLA earned her a 1999 PhD in neuroscience and an MBA in 2016. Liau, 58, is married to fellow UCLA neurosurgeon Marvin Bergsneider. They have two children who are currently in medical school.
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