Eman A. Toraih, MD, MSc., PhD, DBio

Eman Toraih is an Assistant Research Professor in the Division of Endocrinology within the Department of Surgery at Tulane University School of Medicine. She moved to New Orleans in November 2019 to expand her ongoing basic and clinical research program.  

Dr. Toraih received her medical degree (2002) and masters and doctoral degrees in Medical Genetics (2008 and 2014) from Suez Canal University in Egypt. During her time there, she taught Molecular Genetics, Cancer Genomics, and Bioinformatics to medical students and worked as head of the Molecular Lab in the Center of Excellence of Molecular and Cellular Medicine, founded in 2015. Her research focused on cancer, and she presented her work at various local and international conferences where she received numerous awards. She conducted sizable projects on cancer, one of which focused on the genetic makeup of brain cancer patients.   

At Tulane, she has developed a network of multidisciplinary and international collaborators in a short time, bringing together world-class researchers with varying skill sets to achieve common goals. She helps students, fellows, residents, and faculty members to broaden their horizons by learning new subjects and techniques in basic science and clinical research activities. Dr. Toraih’s work has shed light on the utility and benefits of new thyroid cancer biomarkers for active surveillance. She identified a prognostic molecular panel that accurately predicts the risk of tumor specimens developing aggressive behavior. Dr. Toraih was awarded the Carol Lavin Bernick Faculty Grant in 2020, Louisiana Clinical & Translational Science Center grant in 2021, and recently received an American Thyroid Association research grant funded by Bite Me Cancer and Thyroid Cancer Survivors’ Association. Her findings assist clinicians in determining the frequency and modality of follow-up studies to better serve patients with thyroid cancer, with the goal of making a significant positive impact on thyroid cancer survival rates and reducing the aggregate cost of thyroid cancer treatment in the United States. 

On the leadership side, Dr. Toraih proactively introduced OncoLand and DiseaseLand bioinformatics software into Tulane University School of Medicine, providing students and faculty with access to hundreds of curated and quality-controlled public cancer and non-cancer datasets. Dr. Toraih is also the administrator of Ingenuity Pathway Analysis software at Tulane University. Apart from her high adaptability during COVID-19 crisis, Dr. Toraih is also committed to community service. She is engaged in several volunteer activities to provide aid to the homeless, serve meals and basic supplies to those in need, and help communities affected by hurricanes.