Immunology

Biography

Anil Shanker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Cancer Biology at Meharry Medical College. He is also a member of Vanderbilt-Ingram Comprehensive Cancer Center at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Shanker obtained his PhD from Banaras Hindu University in 1999. He performed his postdoctoral studies at the CNRS/INSERM Center of Immunology, Marseille, France and the National Cancer Institute, Frederick, Maryland. His pioneering work with solid tumor models demonstrated that activated CD8 T cells provided a necessary “help” to dormant NK cells in eliciting their antitumor function. His laboratory is currently focused on understanding mechanisms of functional cross-talk between T cells and NK cells in tumor models. He is also dissecting the mechanisms of immunomodulation by the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib and Notch ligand DLL1 in adoptive T cell/NK cell transfer settings in an effort to design novel combinatorial immune strategies in cancer patients. He has over 30 research publications to his credit in cancer and immunology journals.

Research Interest

Tumor immunity and immunotherapy, T cell and NK cell biology, immune effector mechanisms, apoptosis signaling, thymic hormones, regulation of the innate and adaptive bidirectional cooperativity