Prof. Rakesh K. Jain 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. He is known for his outstanding research work on tumor biology, particularly research on the link between tumor blood vessels and improving the effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
In 1972, Prof. Jain received his bachelor's degree in 1972 in Chemical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. In 1974 and 76, he received his MS and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Delaware on the same subject. From 1976 to 1978, he served as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University. In 1978, he joined Carnegie Mellon University where he worked as an Assistant Professor from 1978 to 1979, an Associate Professor from 1979 to 1983, and a Professor from 1983 to 1991 of Chemical Engineering. He is a Mentor to more than 100 doctoral and postdoctoral students from over a dozen different disciplines, and a collaborator of over 100 clinicians and scientists worldwide. Prof. Jain's findings are summarized in more than 435 publications, including three in Scientific American. In 1991, he 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. In 2014-2015, he was among the top 1% cited researchers in Clinical Medicine.
Prof. Jain is regarded as a pioneer in the area of the tumor microenvironment and widely recognized for his seminal discoveries in tumor biology, drug delivery, in vivo imaging, bioengineering, and bench-to-bedside translation. He is most celebrated for proposing a new principle 'normalization of vasculature' for the treatment of malignant and non-malignant diseases characterized by abnormal vessels that afflict more than 500 million people worldwide. 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.
Prof. Jain has served and continues to serve 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. Cancer is spreading at an alarming rate, especially in developing countries like India, which are expected to show steep growth in a number of cases reported. Prof. Jain's work will go a long way in giving effective treatment for those suffering from the disease..
