Dr. Shyam Ajay PatelStanford University Medical Center, Stanford, CA
Biography
I attended Rutgers ? New Jersey Medical School from 2006-2013 where I completed the physician-scientist training program (PSTP) program. The disciplines in which I trained were stem cell and cancer biology. My thesis focused on the mechanisms of breast cancer dormancy in the bone marrow. In brief, we found that bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can favor immune subversion of breast cancer cells by inhibiting various anti-tumor responses (Patel SA et al., J. Immunol. 2010; 184:5885-5894). Mechanistically, we found that MSCs induce Tregs and thus dampen immune effector responses against cancer. We also found that a subset of breast cancer cells, characterized by the expression of the pluripotency marker Oct4, is responsible for initiating tumors (Patel SA et al., Sci. Rep. 2012; 2:906). Finally, we showed the MSCs preferentially protect the cancer stem cell population in the bone marrow (Patel SA et al., J. Cancer Stem Cell Res. 2014; 2: e1003). My other interests are in the biology of acute myeloid leukemia. My research interests include tumor microenvironment, tumor immunology, translational cancer medicine, breast cancer biology, acute myeloid leukemia, and genomics.
Research Interest
My research interests include tumor microenvironment, tumor immunology, translational cancer medicine, breast cancer biology, acute myeloid leukemia, and genomics.