Arezu Jahani-Asl

Arezu Jahani-Asl (born c. 1970s) is an Iranian-born Kurdish physician, neurobiologist and research scientist based in Montreal, Canada. She is the Canada research chair in neurobiology of disease at the University of Ottawa, a professor of medicine at McGill University, and a principal investigator at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at the Jewish General Hospital in Quebec. She is best known for her research into glioblastoma, a highly aggressive and fatal form of brain cancer.

Jahani-Asl was born in Mahabad, East Kurdistan, Iran.^[1] Her youth was marked by political turmoil; during her childhood, several of her family members, including her cousins and uncles, were executed, and her father was imprisoned for political activism.^[1] At the age of 17, following her father's release, her family fled Iran and spent two years as asylum seekers in Turkey before immigrating to Canada.^[1]

After settling in Toronto, she attended the University of Toronto while adapting to a new language and culture.^[1] She later pursued higher education in Ottawa and Montreal before completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School under the mentorship of fellow Kurdish professor Azad Bonni.^[1]

Jahani-Asl's research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of brain tumor progression. She is best known for her research into glioblastoma, a highly aggressive and fatal form of brain cancer.^[1][2] She served as the lead author of a significant study published in Nature Neuroscience which identified the OSMR gene as a primary driver of glioblastoma tumor growth.^[1][3][4][5] Her laboratory at McGill University works on developing compounds to suppress this gene, aiming to find treatments for tumors that are resistant to standard chemotherapy and radiation.^[1]

In 2024, she and her team demonstrated that edaravone, a drug usually used to treat ALS, could be used to treat glioblastomas.^[2]

She is the Canada research chair in neurobiology of disease at the University of Ottawa,^[6] a professor of medicine at McGill University, and a principal investigator at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at the Jewish General Hospital in Quebec.^[1]

Jahani-Asl resides in Montreal with her husband, professor Vahab D. Soleimani, and their son.^[1] She has cited her Kurdish heritage and the hardships she faced as an immigrant as the source of her persistence in academia.^[1] She has also expressed public admiration for the resistance of the people of Kobani.^[1]

• Irrcher, I.; Aleyasin, H.; Seifert, E.L.; Hewitt, S.J.; Chhabra, S.; Phillips, M.; Lutz, A.K.; Rousseaux, M.W.C.; Bevilacqua, L.; Jahani-Asl, A.; Callaghan, S.; MacLaurin, J.G.; Winklhofer, K.F.; Rizzu, P.; Rippstein, P. (October 1, 2010). "Loss of the Parkinson's disease-linked gene DJ-1 perturbs mitochondrial dynamics". Human Molecular Genetics. 19 (19): 3734–3746. doi:10.1093/hmg/ddq288. ISSN 1460-2083.
• Sharanek, Ahmad; Burban, Audrey; Laaper, Matthew; Heckel, Emilie; Joyal, Jean-Sebastien; Soleimani, Vahab D.; Jahani-Asl, Arezu (August 17, 2020). "OSMR controls glioma stem cell respiration and confers resistance of glioblastoma to ionizing radiation". Nature Communications. 11 (1). Springer Science and Business Media. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17885-z. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 7431428.

• Profile at University of Ottawa
• Profile at McGill