Cifarelli Christopher P

Dr. Cifarelli completed his doctoral degrees at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA, earning a PhD in Developmental Biology & Teratology focused on cancer cell migration mechanisms, followed by his MD from Jefferson Medical College. He subsequently completed his residency in Neurological Surgery at the University of Virginia under the direction of John A. Jane Sr. MD, PhD, including a fellowship at Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand. Since 2014, Dr. Cifarelli has served as the Director of the West Virginia University Gamma Knife Radiosurgery program and is currently an Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurosurgery & Radiation Oncology. Within his practice of neurosurgical oncology, Dr. Cifarelli is recognized as an expert in radiosurgery and intraoperative radiotherapy. In 2017, Dr. Cifarelli developed the WVU Intra-operative Radiotherapy (IORT) CNS Program and enrolled the first U.S. patient in the INTRAGO II Clinical Trial for the treatment of newly diagnosed glioblastoma. Subsequently, Dr. Cifarelli has expanded the use of IORT to management of surgically resected metastatic brain tumors, creating an international collaborative group and patient registry dedicated to IORT in brain metastases. He regularly lectures on the subject at the national and international levels and serves a key opinion leader in the field. Since 2019, Dr. Cifarelli led the efforts of the Brain Tumor Team at the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute for the introduction of focused ultrasound clinical trials in blood-brain-barrier disruption and, more recently in sonodynamic therapy and liquid biopsy, for glioblastoma and CNS metastases. Currently, he serves as the Chair of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons/American Association of Neurological Surgeons Tumor Section Subcommittee on Innovation & New Technology as well as the AANS/CNS Liaison to ASTRO. He regularly lectures on IORT, Radiosurgery, and molecular mechanisms of radiation sensitivity in primary and metastatic tumors for which he has received NIH support.