Rakesh K. Jain (born 1950) is the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital in the

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

and Director of the E.L. Steele Laboratories for Tumor Biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has mentored more than 200 graduate and postdoctoral students from over a dozen different disciplines. Jain's research findings are summarized in more than 600 publications, which have been cited more than 70,000 times (as of December, 2015). He was among the top 1% cited researchers in Clinical Medicine in 2014-15. He serves or has served 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. He was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

in 2004 for the integration of bioengineering with tumor biology and imaging gene expression and functions in vivo for drug delivery in tumors. He is also a member of the

National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...

, the National Academy of Sciences and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

. In 2014, he was chosen as one of 50 Oncology Luminaries on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. ASCO Post, August 15, 2014; Vol. 5, Issue 13
/ref> In 2015, Jain received honorary doctorates from Duke University, KU Leuven, Belgium and IIT-Kanpur, India. In 2013, he was awarded the

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

Training and career path

Jain received his bachelor's degree in 1972 from IIT Kanpur, and his MS and PhD degrees in 1974 and 1976 from the University of Delaware, all in chemical engineering. He served as assistant professor of chemical engineering at Columbia University (1976 to 1978), and as assistant (1978–79), associate (1979–83) and full professor (1983-1991) of chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He spent his 1983-84 sabbatical year as a Guggenheim Fellow in the departments of chemical engineering at MIT, bioengineering at UCSD and radiation oncology at Stanford, and his 1990-91 sabbatical as a Humboldt Senior Scientist-Awardee at the Institute of Pathophysiology of University of Mainz, and the Institute of Experimental Surgery of University of Munich. In 1991, Jain became the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Radiation Oncology (Tumor Biology) at

, and Director of Edwin L. Steele Laboratories of Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Research

Jain is regarded as a pioneer in the area of tumor microenvironment and widely recognized for his seminal discoveries in tumor biology, drug delivery, in vivo imaging, bioengineering, and bench-to-bedside translation. These include uncovering the barriers to the delivery and efficacy of molecular and nano-medicines in tumors, developing new strategies to overcome these barriers, and then translating these strategies from bench to bedside. He is most celebrated for proposing a new principle – normalization of vasculature – for treatment of malignant and non-malignant diseases characterized by abnormal vessels that afflict more than 500 million people worldwide.Jain, RK. Normalization of tumor vasculature: an emerging concept in antiangiogenic therapy. Science, 307: 58-62, 2005 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.

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External links

Curriculum Vitae
at Harvard Medical School {{DEFAULTSORT:Jain, Rakesh American chemical engineers Cancer researchers University of Delaware alumni Harvard Medical School faculty Medical educators Living people American Jains Members of the National Academy of Medicine IIT Kanpur alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences National Medal of Science laureates American academics of Indian descent 1950 births Indian American American people of Indian descent