Research Summary

Dr. Braunstein is a radiation oncologist with a clinical interest in the treatment of pediatric, central nervous system, and soft tissue malignancies. He has expertise in modern radiation therapy techniques including stereotactic radiotherapy (Gamma Knife, Cyberknife, Linac-based SBRT), intraoperative radiotherapy, and intensity modulated radiation therapy.

Dr. Braunstein earned his M.D. at New York University School of Medicine where he also obtained a Ph.D. studying molecular pathways by which cancer cells mediate response to radiation. He currently serves as Vice Chair and Clinical Director of Radiation Oncology. His research focus includes mitigation of early and late toxicity in treatment of pediatric malignancies as well as optimizing combination of immuno- and targeted-therapies in the management of primary and metastatic central nervous system malignancies.

Education

University of California, San Francisco, 06/14, Radiation Oncology
Brighman and Women's Hospital, 06/10, Internal Medicine
New York University School of Medicine, M.D., Ph.D., 06/09

Honors & Awards

  • 2020
    UCSF Rap Award
  • 2019
    ARRO Teacher of the Year Award
  • 2018
    UCSF Rap Award
  • 2017
    UCSF Radiation Oncology-Radiology Award
  • 2016
    ARRO Teacher of the Year Award
  • 2015
    UCSF Patient Care Fund Award
  • 2014
    RSNA Roetgen Research Award
  • 2013
    UCSF Exceptional Physician Award

Selected Publications

  1. Barrios J, Porter E, Capaldi DPI, Upadhaya T, Chen WC, Perks JR, Apte A, Aristophanous M, LoCastro E, Hsu D, Stone PH, Villanueva-Meyer JE, Valdes G, Jiang F, Maddalena M, Ballangrud A, Prezelski K, Lin H, Sun JY, Aldin MAK, Chau OW, Ziemer B, Seaberg M, Sneed PK, Nakamura JL, Boreta LC, Fogh SE, Raleigh DR, Chew J, Vasudevan H, Cha S, Hess C, Fragoso R, Shultz DB, Pike L, Hervey-Jumper SL, Tsang DS, Theodosopoulos P, Cooke D, Benedict SH, Sheng K, Seuntjens J, Coolens C, Deasy JO, Braunstein S, Morin O. Author Correction: Multi-institutional atlas of brain metastases informs spatial modeling for precision imaging and personalized therapy. Nat Commun. 2025 Jun 02; 16(1):5096.  View on PubMed
  2. Ma L, Luan S, Dang NP, Ziemer B, Braunstein S, McDermott M, Yu C, Zada G, Chang EL Spot-Scanning Confocal Photon Beams for Hypofractionated Brain Radiosurgery.  View on PubMed
  3. Tsang DS, Murphy E, Salerno KE, Parkes J, Hiniker SM, Braunstein S Stereotactic Radiation Therapy in Children and Young Adults: Can We Apply Adult Treatment Paradigms?  View on PubMed
  4. Barrios J, Porter E, Capaldi DPI, Upadhaya T, Chen WC, Perks JR, Apte A, Aristophanous M, LoCastro E, Hsu D, Stone PH, Villanueva-Meyer JE, Valdes G, Jiang F, Maddalena M, Ballangrud A, Prezelski K, Lin H, Sun JY, Aldin MAK, Chau OW, Ziemer B, Seaberg M, Sneed PK, Nakamura JL, Boreta LC, Fogh SE, Raleigh DR, Chew J, Vasudevan H, Cha S, Hess C, Fragoso R, Shultz DB, Pike L, Hervey-Jumper SL, Tsang DS, Theodosopoulos P, Cooke D, Benedict SH, Sheng K, Seuntjens J, Coolens C, Deasy JO, Braunstein S, Morin O. Multi-institutional atlas of brain metastases informs spatial modeling for precision imaging and personalized therapy. Nat Commun. 2025 May 15; 16(1):4536.  View on PubMed
  5. Shah C, Campbell SR, Murphy E, Braunstein S, Dietz MS, Binitie O, Kastenberg ZJ, Yanagawa J, Halpern J, Kis B, Hunt S, Yazdanpanah F, Gupta A, Trucco M Consensus recommendations regarding local and metastasis-directed therapies in the management of relapsed/recurrent Ewing sarcoma.  View on PubMed
  6. Sperduto PW, Marqueen KE, Chang E, Li J, Davies MA, Ebner DK, Breen WG, Lamba N, Shih HA, Edwards D, Kim MM, Mahal A, Rahman R, Ankrah N, Boggs DH, Lewis C, Hyer D, Buatti JM, Johri F, Soliman H, Masucci L, Roberge D, Aneja S, Chiang V, Phuong C, Braunstein S, Dajani S, Sachdev S, Wan Z, Niedzwiecki D, Vaios E, Kirkpatrick JP, Pasetsky J, Wang TJC, Kutuk T, Kotecha R, Ross RB, Rusthoven CG, Nakano T, Tawbi HA, Mehta MP Improved Survival and Prognostication in Melanoma Patients With Brain Metastases: An Update of the Melanoma Graded Prognostic Assessment.  View on PubMed
  7. Yegya-Raman N, Plastaras JP, Wright CM, Chelius MR, Zhang S, Baron JA, Hubbeling H, Sim AJ, Robinson TJ, Jain MD, Imber BS, Fregonese B, Yahalom J, Ladbury C, Dandapani S, Pinnix CC, Gunther JR, Fang PQ, Wu SY, Dabaja BS, Yang JC, Chew J, Braunstein S, Sinha S, Denlinger N, Sun S, Terezakis SA, Sakthivel G, Constine LS, Chowdhry AK, Reagan PM, Burke S, Tseng YD, LaRiviere MJ, Maity A, Schuster SJ, Chong EA, Figura NB Bridging Radiotherapy Prior to Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cells for B-Cell Lymphomas: An ILROG Multicenter Study.  View on PubMed
  8. Chang C, Chen JJ, Feng J, Friesner I, Mohindra S, Boreta L, Rabow MW, Braunstein SE, Benson R, Hong JC. Patterns in Symptoms Preceding Acute Care in Patients With Cancer. JAMA Netw Open. 2025 Apr 01; 8(4):e256366.  View on PubMed
  9. Liu KX, Salans M, Easwaran TP, Phuong C, Yeo KK, Elhalawani H, Catalano PJ, Dusenbery K, Marcus KJ, Terezakis SA, Haas-Kogan DA, Braunstein SE. The association between postoperative photon radiotherapy dose and disease control and salvage treatment in pediatric and adolescent ependymoma: a multi-institutional investigation. J Neurooncol. 2025 Feb 25.  View on PubMed
  10. Willcox J, Gregg AT, Braunstein S, Mattes MD, Gunther J, Abrams M. Defining an Undergraduate Radiation Oncology Microclerkship Using the Delphi Method. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2024 Dec 27.  View on PubMed
  11. Salerno KE, Tsang DS, Braunstein SE, Parkes JD, Hiniker SM, Ermoian RP. Flipping the Script: Where Are We Now With Preoperative Radiation Therapy for Soft Tissue Sarcoma? Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2024 Nov 01; 120(3):615-620.  View on PubMed
  12. Pikis S, Mantziaris G, Protopapa M, Tos SM, Kowalchuk RO, Ross RB, Rusthoven CG, Tripathi M, Langlois AM, Mathieu D, Lee CC, Yang HC, Peker S, Samanci Y, Zhang MY, Braunstein SE, Wei Z, Niranjan A, Lunsford DL, Sheehan J. Stereotactic radiosurgery for brain metastases from human epidermal receptor 2 positive breast Cancer: an international, multi-center study. J Neurooncol. 2024 Oct; 170(1):199-208.  View on PubMed
  13. Vasudevan H, Braunstein S. In Reply to the Letter to the Editor Regarding "Mutational Status and Clinical Outcomes Following Systemic Therapy with or without Focal Radiation for Resected Melanoma Brain Metastases". World Neurosurg. 2024 08; 188:252.  View on PubMed
  14. Jiao C, Lao Y, Zhang W, Braunstein S, Salans M, Villanueva-Meyer J, Hervey-Jumper SL, Yang B, Morin O, Valdes G, Fan Z, Shiroishi M, Zada G, Sheng K, Yang W. Multi-modal fusion and feature enhancement U-Net coupling with stem cell niches proximity estimation for voxel-wise GBM recurrence prediction. Phys Med Biol. 2024 Jul 25; 69(15).  View on PubMed
  15. Pike LRG, Miao E, Boe LA, Patil T, Imber BS, Myall NJ, Pollom EL, Hui C, Qu V, Langston J, Chiang V, Grant M, Goldberg SB, Palmer JD, Prasad RN, Wang TJC, Lee A, Shu CA, Chen LN, Thomas NJ, Braunstein SE, Kavanagh BD, Camidge DR, Rusthoven CG. Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors With and Without Up-Front Stereotactic Radiosurgery for Brain Metastases From EGFR and ALK Oncogene-Driven Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (TURBO-NSCLC). J Clin Oncol. 2024 Oct 20; 42(30):3606-3617.  View on PubMed
  16. Liu KX, Shaaban SG, Chen JJ, Bagatell R, Lerman BJ, Catalano PJ, DuBois SG, Shusterman S, Ioakeim-Ioannidou M, Yock TI, Shamberger RC, Mattei P, Vu L, Elhalawani H, Dusenbery KE, Vo KT, Huang MS, Friedmann AM, Diller LR, Marcus KJ, MacDonald SM, Terezakis SA, Braunstein SE, Hill-Kayser CE, Haas-Kogan DA. Patterns of recurrence after radiotherapy for high-risk neuroblastoma: Implications for radiation dose and field. Radiother Oncol. 2024 09; 198:110384.  View on PubMed
  17. Nguyen MP, Almiron Bonnin D, Mirchia K, Chen WC, Goldschmidt E, Braunstein SE, Perry A, Raleigh DR, Oberheim Bush NA. Response to immune checkpoint inhibition in a meningioma with DNA mismatch repair deficiency. Neurooncol Adv. 2024 Jan-Dec; 6(1):vdae092.  View on PubMed
  18. Rudie JD, Saluja R, Weiss DA, Nedelec P, Calabrese E, Colby JB, Laguna B, Mongan J, Braunstein S, Hess CP, Rauschecker AM, Sugrue LP, Villanueva-Meyer JE. The University of California San Francisco Brain Metastases Stereotactic Radiosurgery (UCSF-BMSR) MRI Dataset. Radiol Artif Intell. 2024 03; 6(2):e230126.  View on PubMed
  19. Mahoney MT, Corrigan KL, Linkowski LC, Abdelaal MR, Munsell MF, Cruz D, Royal A, Braunstein SE, Mix MD, Gunther JR, Radiation Oncology Education Collaborative Study Group Undergraduate Medical Education Working Group. Applicant and Program Director Perceptions of Second Look Events During the 2023 Radiation Oncology Residency Match. Adv Radiat Oncol. 2024 Jun; 9(6):101473.  View on PubMed
  20. Ramesh P, Ruan D, Liu SJ, Seo Y, Braunstein S, Sheng K. Hypoxia-informed RBE-weighted beam orientation optimization for intensity modulated proton therapy. Med Phys. 2024 Mar; 51(3):2320-2333.  View on PubMed

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