Rakesh K. Jain

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Rakesh Kumar Jain (born December 18, 1950 in Lalitpur ) is an Indian-American tumor biologist and chemist.

Jain studied chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur with a bachelor's degree in 1972 and at the University of Delaware at Newark with a master's degree in 1974 and a doctorate with James Wei in 1975. He was 1976 to 1978 Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry at Columbia University and from 1978 at Carnegie Mellon University , at which he became an associate professor in 1979 and a full professor in 1983. From 1991 he was director of the Edwin L. Steele Laboratory for Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital as well as professor at MIT and at Harvard Medical School (A. Werk Cook Professor of Radiation Oncology (Tumor Biology)).

He investigates the micro-environment of tumors, the microcirculation in their environment, the heat balance in the tumor tissue and the transport of molecules in the tumor, the rheology of malignant and non-malignant cells (metastasis spread) and interaction with vascular walls (tumor-host interaction). He also developed methods of depicting tumors in vivo (including with special genetically modified mouse strains and surgically implanted transparent windows), introducing drugs to the tumors and new therapeutic approaches based on knowledge about the microenvironment of tumors such as an anti-angiogenesis therapy, which is then applied is based on normalizing the abnormal tumor blood vessel formation (vascular normalization) and thus enabling better chemotherapy, for example. Further starting points are the manipulation of the extracellular matrix of tumors, which can also be an obstacle to chemotherapy by hindering the blood supply. He works in an interdisciplinary manner and with direct clinical application (bench to bedside).

Jain is a member of the National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the National Academy of Engineering , the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science . He holds honorary doctorates from Duke University , the Catholic University of Leuven and the IIT in Kanpur. In 1990/91 he received a Humboldt Research Award with which he was at the Universities of Mainz and Munich.

In 2014 he received the National Medal of Science . In 1983/84 he was a Guggenheim Fellow.

There is a chemist of the same name from India (* 1956) at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute who develops synthetic antigens.

Fonts

  • Barriers to drug delivery in solid tumors, Scientific American, Volume 271, July 1994, pp. 58-65
  • Taming vessels to treat cancer, Scientific American, Volume 298, Nov. 2008, pp. 56-63, online
  • with T. Stylianopoulos: Delivering nanomedicine to solid tumors, Nature Rev. Clin. Oncol., Vol. 7, 2010, No. 11, pp. 653-664.
  • An indirect way to tame cancer, Scientific American, Volume 310, February 2014, pp. 46-53
  • with PF Carmeliet: Vessels of death or life, Scientific American, Volume 285, 2001, pp. 38-45
  • with P. Carmeliet: Molecular mechanisms and clinical applications, Nature, Volume 473, 2011, pp. 298-307
  • Normalizing tumor microenvironment to treat cancer: bench to bedside to biomarkers, J Clin Oncol, Volume 31, 2013, pp. 2205-2218
  • Antiangiogenesis strategies revisited: from starving tumors to alleviating hypoxia. Cancer Cell, Volume 26, 2014, pp. 605-622
  • Normalizing tumor vasculature with anti-angiogenic therapy: a new paradigm for combination therapy, Nature Medicine, Volume 7, 2001, pp. 987-989
  • Normalization of tumor vasculature: an emerging concept in antiangiogenic therapy. Science, Volume 307, 2005, pp. 58-62

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Birth and career data up to 2004 according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004