Anil Chandraker, MD
By Merin C. MacDonald | Date published: October 15, 2024
October Researcher Spotlight: Anil Chandraker, MD
Anil Chandraker, MD, the Jack M. Wilson Chair in Biomedical Research, professor of medicine, and chief of the Division of Renal Medicine, first became interested in research as a renal fellow in the United Kingdom. At the time, he observed that despite patients’ desire to be taken off dialysis, transplantation was not always the best solution—there was still much that was unknown about transplantation and its outcomes. “I was inspired by a clinician from Egypt who was focused on transplant immunology,” said Dr. Chandraker. “His research was really exciting and triggered what has ended up being a career-long focus.” With limited research opportunities in this area in the U.K., Dr. Chandraker moved to the United States where he trained as a research fellow and eventually became a faculty member at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He remained there until earlier this year when he joined the faculty at UMass Chan Medical School.
Dr. Chandraker’s work as a transplant nephrologist and scientist focuses on transplant immunology. Specifically, he is currently investigating the development of regulatory T cells that allow the immune system of transplanted patients to accept a transplanted kidney without the need for immunosuppression. The standard of care for kidney transplantation has been that patients are placed on heavy-duty immunosuppression before transplantation which works well for preventing rejection but can increase the risk of infection and malignancy in the long term. The Chandraker lab is looking into an alternate approach that aims to reduce these risks. “We wait for patients to be transplanted and until they have developed a regulatory response which is a small part of their response. The majority of the response is still trying to reject the organ, but there is a small regulatory response that is simultaneously ongoing,” said Dr. Chandraker. “We take circulating immune cells from patients after transplant to expand their regulatory population of cells with the idea that we could give these back to the patient and then reduce the need for immunosuppression.” Dr. Chandraker hopes to develop this research beyond kidney transplantation and collaborate with liver transplantation research teams at UMass Chan.
Another focus of Dr. Chandraker’s research is polyomavirus, commonly known as BK infection, an area of concern for kidney transplant patients. Primary BK infection occurs during childhood and is carried into adulthood latently in renal epithelial cells. During transplantation, the virus can become reactivated because of ischemia and immunosuppression. If left untreated, it can lead to end-stage renal disease, which may result in a loss of the transplanted kidney. “My research in this area began because I had a patient who had BK infection after transplantation that we were unable to treat,” said Dr. Chandraker. “Working with collaborators at the Dana Faber Cancer Institute, I identified and tested quinolone antibiotics to test which ones might be effective.” His work in this area has been widely cited and led to clinical trials to test the effectiveness of quinolone antibiotics against BK virus in kidney transplant patients. While these studies in the lab were very effective, their utility for patients could not ultimately be proven when administering safe doses of the antibiotics.
In all of his studies, Dr. Chandraker emphasizes the importance of a practical approach. “If you're trying to do something that is not aligned with current clinical practice, you may need a paradigm shift in how you treat patients and that itself can sometimes be problematic,” he said. “You could have a great idea that works perfectly in the lab but it just isn't practical in the clinical setting. We take great care to assess whether our research is pragmatic before beginning.”
Before coming to UMass Chan in 2024, Dr. Chandraker served as medical director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation and was the former director of the Transplantation Research Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He also served as president of the American Society of Transplantation from 2016 to 2017. He has contributed to 250 original publications and his work has been cited nearly 15,000 times. In September 2024, Dr. Chandraker was announced as the inaugural holder of the Jack M. Wilson Chair in Biomedical Sciences at UMass Chan Medical School.
We are excited that Dr. Chandraker has joined us in the Department of Medicine and we look forward to the valuable contributions that he will bring to our community.