Biography

Vikas P. Sukhatme MD ScD is the Victor J. Aresty Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Chief Academic Officer and Harvard Faculty Dean for Academic Affairs at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. As a physician-scientist, Dr. Sukhatme has had a longstanding interest in cancer. Current investigations center on tumor metabolism and immunology. He has conducted studies on genes important in kidney cancer and polycystic kidney disease. He is recognized for a wide range of interdisciplinary translational research: elucidating mechanisms of statin-induced myopathy, tumor angiogenesis, vascular leak in sepsis and as part of the team that discovered the cause of preeclampsia. His laboratory cloned the first family of mammalian zinc finger transcription factors, the most common motif in the human genome. He is co-founder of a not-for-profit organization, GlobalCures, whose goal is to conduct clinical trials on promising therapies for cancer not being pursued for lack of profitability. Finally, he has been interested in setting up a clinic network that will maximize the chances of a cancer patient’s survival through combinatorial use of off-label drugs, while at the same time accelerating new discoveries.

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