Dr. Hridayesh Prakash who is presently Ramanujan Fellow at UoH is involved in an important Discovery in the field of Cancer Immunotherapy
Joint efforts of Dr. Hridayesh Prakash, Ph. D (Ramanujan Fellow), Department of Biochemistry, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH) together with members of his previous institute led to an important discovery which was made at German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Germany. Their pioneer work shows the indispensable role of macrophages; one of the major components of innate immune system, in affording immunity against neuroendocrine, solid and non-resectable tumor of pancreas. Their experiments explicitly demonstrated that replenishment of resident macrophages by gamma rays programmed macrophages in a therapeutic setting in tumor bearing mice potentially inhibited the tumor supply of nutrients (angiogenesis), facilitated migration of effector T cell into tumor tissue and caused a successful tumor rejection. These observations were dependent on iNOS enzyme which is expressed by tumor regulatory macrophages. Taken together their work revealed the significance of macrophages directed approaches as indispensable components of future immunotherapeutic strategies against established tumors. This study has been published in the recent issue of very high impact journal known as Cancer cell with an impact factor of 27.5 (Vol 24, 1–14, November 11, 2013).
Dr. Prakash is an M.Sc from IIT Roorkee and a PhD from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Science, DRDO. His field of specialization includes Pulmonary Infection Biology, Macrophages Immunobiology, Host Apoptosis regulation, Signal Transduction, Tumour Immunology (lung and pancreatic cancer). Major research focus of Dr. Prakash is to unravel the molecular mechanism(s) by which Chlamydia and Mycobacterial pulmonary pathogens dysregulate both apoptotic and innate immune signalling for their escape from eradication by innate immune system during chronic and persistent infections using transgenic and knock out mouse model systems. The second major research interest of Dr. Prakash is to dissect early molecular events which trigger the polarization of M1 macrophages (regulatory macrophages) to M2 (tumor promoting macrophages) during cancer development and to explore how selective and persistent activation of M1 macrophages could improve existing anti-tumor immunotherapy in both mouse and human model of tumor with special emphasis on pancreatic and lung cancers.
Dr. Prakash has worked as Post-Doctoral Scientist at the Department of Dermatology, University Medical Centre, Heidelberg, Germany; Post-Doctoral Scientist at the Translational Immunology Group, National Centre for Tumor Diseases, German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg Germany; Postdoctoral fellow at the Cell Biology and Biophysics Division, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg and as Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Molecular Biology, Max-Planck Institute for infection Biology, Berlin before joining University of Hyderabad. Presently, he is working at UoH as Department of Science and Technology Ramanujan Fellow.
Dr. Prakash can be reached by email: hpslpf@uohyd.ernet.in, hridayesh.prakash@googlemail.com
Reference
Klug, F.*, H. Prakash, P*. E. Huber,* T. Seibel*, N. Bender, N. Halama, C. Pfirschke, R. H. Voss, C. Timke, L. Umansky, K. Klapproth, K. Schakel, N. Garbi, D. Jager, J. Weitz, H. Schmitz-Winnenthal, G. J. Hammerling, and P. Beckhove. 2013. Low-Dose Irradiation Programs Macrophage Differentiation to an iNOS(+)/M1 Phenotype that Orchestrates Effective T Cell Immunotherapy. Cancer Cell 24: 589-602. ( Impact factor 27.5)
(* shared first authorship)