April 15--Northwestern University will hold a memorial service Friday for Dr. Andrew Parsa, the neurological surgery chairman at the Feinberg School of Medicine who died suddenly Monday, a university spokeswoman said Tuesday.
The service for Parsa, 48, is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for the Northwestern Medicine community in Feinberg Pavilion Ballroom A at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
The Cook County medical examiner's office hadn't released a cause of death.
Parsa dedicated his life to treating the deadliest form of brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme, spearheading the largest randomized brain tumor vaccine trial to be funded by the National Cancer Institute, Northwestern officials said.
Parsa initiated one of the first vaccine studies for brain tumor patients in his hometown of Brooklyn, N.Y., at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, where he pursued his graduate and medical degrees. After neurosurgical training at Columbia University, he took that research to University of California at San Francisco, where he worked for a decade and led an innovative approach to treating brain cancer by removing patients' tumors and creating individual vaccines from their malignant masses.
In 2013, he became chairman of neurological surgery at Feinberg. In July, Parsa's team released results from the study's second phase. His methodology is in its third phase of clinical trials at Feinberg, said Dr. Eric Neilson, Feinberg vice president for medical affairs.
In addition to his clinical work, Parsa performed about 300 surgeries each year, hosting training students and residents. He also published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles, reviews, chapters and monographs in the past decade.
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