Journal of Blood & Lymph

Rao H. Prabhala

Rao H. Prabhala, M.Sc., M.S., Ph.D
Director, Dept. of Microbiology and Medical Oncology
Harvard Medical School, USA

Biography

Dr. Prabhala received his MS in Soil Microbiology from A. Nagarguna University in Guntur, India, in 1977. He completed his second MS in Medical Microbiology from California State University-LA in 1985. He received his PhD in tumor immunology from the University of Arizona-Tucson in 1989. He went on to complete his post-doctoral fellowship in mucosal immunology at Dartmouth Medical School in 1991. After working in medical schools and the pharmaceutical industry, he joined the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as an instructor in 2000. He is an expert in a number of medical fields, including immune-Oncology, Infectious disease, mucosal immunity, Vaccines, and medical electronics. He worked in three major areas, including hematological malignancies, gastrointestinal tract malignancies, and neuroinflammation for the purpose of generating CAR T-cell-based immunotherapeutics. He developed state-of-the-art technologies, including CyTOF and multi-color flow Cytometry, to characterize comprehensive immune profiles using 190 conjugated monoclonal antibodies for numerous cellular subsets to predict clinical and diagnostic outcomes. He started immune monitoring in 4 different clinical trials, including Phase I/II BCMA-based CART-T trial of Novartis, FDA-approved - Ide-cel, Carvykti, and BITE, using longitudinal samples of peripheral blood and bone marrow utilizing single-cell sequencing called CITE-Seq (cellular indexing of transcriptomes and epitopes). He has created and validated three different libraries: protein (142 markers), RNA, and TCR library. He has expertise in all aspects of cellular immunology related to oncology and infectious diseases with working knowledge of single-cell sequencing, bioinformatics profiles, and microbiota applications.

Research Interest

Immune-Oncology, Infectious disease, mucosal immunity, Vaccines, and medical electronics. Hematological malignancies, gastro-intestinal tract malignancies and neuro inflammation for the purposes of generating CAR T-cell-based immunotherapeutic