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Rakesh K. Jain
BornDecember 18, 1950
Alma mater University of Delaware, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Known forTumor pathophysiology, Tumor normalization
Awards Guggenheim Fellowship (1983)
Founding Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (1992)
Outstanding Investigator Grant, NIH (1993; 2015)
Whitaker Distinguished Lecturer, Biomedical Engineering Society (1995)
Eugene M. Landis Award, Microcirculatory Society (1996)
National Academy of Medicine (2003)
National Academy of Engineering (2004)
Academic Scientist of the Year, 2005 Pharmaceutical Achievement Awards (2005)
Benjamin Zweifach Distinguished Lecture, The City College, New York (2006)
Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2008)
National Academy of Sciences (2009)
ASCO Science of Oncology Award and Lecture (2012)
Princess Takamatsu Lecture/Award
National Medal of Science (2013)
American Association for Cancer Research (2014) Earl P. Benditt Award (2018)
Scientific career
Fields Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, Tumor Biology
Institutions Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital
Doctoral advisorJames Wei
Other academic advisorsPietro M. Gullino

Rakesh K. Jain (born 1950) is the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Harvard Medical School and director of the E.L. Steele Laboratories for Tumor Biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. [1]

He has mentored more than 200 graduate and postdoctoral students from over a dozen different disciplines. Jain's research findings are summarized in more than 600 publications, which have been cited more than 200,000 times (as of November, 2023). He was among the top 1% cited researchers in Clinical Medicine in 2014-15. [2] He serves or has served on advisory panels to government, industry and academia, and is a member of editorial advisory boards of 22 journals, including Nature Reviews Cancer and Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology.

He has received more than 75 awards from engineering and medical professional societies/institutions. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for the integration of bioengineering with tumor biology and imaging gene expression and functions in vivo for drug delivery in tumors. He is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2014, he was chosen as one of 50 Oncology Luminaries on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. [3] In 2015, Jain received honorary doctorates from Duke University, KU Leuven, Belgium and IIT-Kanpur, India. In 2013, he was awarded the National Medal of Science. [4]

Training and career path

Jain received his bachelor's degree in 1972 from IIT Kanpur, and his MS and PhD degrees in 1974 and 1976 from the University of Delaware, all in chemical engineering. He served as assistant professor of chemical engineering at Columbia University (1976 to 1978), and as assistant (1978–79), associate (1979–83) and full professor (1983-1991) of chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He spent his 1983-84 sabbatical year as a Guggenheim Fellow in the departments of chemical engineering at MIT, bioengineering at UCSD and radiation oncology at Stanford, and his 1990-91 sabbatical as a Humboldt Senior Scientist-Awardee at the Institute of Pathophysiology of University of Mainz, and the Institute of Experimental Surgery of University of Munich. In 1991, Jain became the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Radiation Oncology (Tumor Biology) at Harvard Medical School, and Director of Edwin L. Steele Laboratories of Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Research

Jain is regarded as a pioneer in the area of tumor microenvironment and widely recognized for his seminal discoveries in tumor biology, drug delivery, in vivo imaging, bioengineering, and bench-to-bedside translation. [5] [6] [7] [8] These include uncovering the barriers to the delivery and efficacy of molecular and nano-medicines in tumors, developing new strategies to overcome these barriers, and then translating these strategies from bench to bedside. [9] [10] He is most celebrated for proposing a new principle – normalization of vasculature – for treatment of malignant and non-malignant diseases characterized by abnormal vessels that afflict more than 500 million people worldwide. [11] [12] [13] This concept has fundamentally changed the thinking of scientists and clinicians about how antiangiogenic agents work, and how to combine them optimally with other therapies to improve the treatment outcome in patients. [3]

References

  1. ^ Steele Laboratories web site
  2. ^ Thomson-Reuters list of highly cited researchers
  3. ^ a b ASCO Post, August 15, 2014; Vol. 5, Issue 13
  4. ^ National Science & Technology Medals Foundation
  5. ^ Jain, RK. Barriers to drug delivery in solid tumors. Sci Am, 271: 58-65, 1994
  6. ^ Jain, RK. Taming vessels to treat cancer. Sci Am, 298: 56-63, 2008
  7. ^ Jain, RK. An indirect way to tame cancer. Sci Am, 310: 46-53, 2014
  8. ^ Jain, RK and PF Carmeliet. Vessels of death or life. Sci Am, 285: 38-45, 2001
  9. ^ Jain, RK. Normalizing tumor microenvironment to treat cancer: bench to bedside to biomarkers. J Clin Oncol, 31: 2205-18, 2013
  10. ^ Video of the award lecture, Normalizing Tumor Microenvironment to Treat Cancer: Bench to Bedside to Biomarkers; 2012 ASCO Annual Meeting
  11. ^ Jain, RK. Antiangiogenesis strategies revisited: from starving tumors to alleviating hypoxia. Cancer Cell, 26: 605-22, 2014
  12. ^ Jain, RK. Normalizing tumor vasculature with anti-angiogenic therapy: a new paradigm for combination therapy. Nat Med, 7: 987-9, 2001
  13. ^ Jain, RK. Normalization of tumor vasculature: an emerging concept in antiangiogenic therapy. Science, 307: 58-62, 2005

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