Biography

Dr. Rao is an established leader in the field of gastrointestinal cancer chemopreventive drug development and nutritional carcinogenesis. His molecular targeted approaches in developing cancer chemopreventive drugs for colorectal and other epithelial cancer prevention are nationally and internationally recognized. Several targeted drugs identified by Dr. Rao’s research group in the preclinical models entered into Phase II and III clinical trials conducted by the NCI; this includes anti-inflammatory, COX-2 selective inhibitor, celecoxib and more recently, low-dose combination of NSAIDs or statins and polyamine pathway inhibitors. Furthermore, Dr. Rao’s group is the first to show that combinational molecular targeting provides better synergistic efficacy without unwanted side effects. The proof-of-principle trial found that the intervention of a combination of polyamine inhibitor with COX inhibitors was markedly effective in reducing metachronous adenomas of the colon. Dr. Rao led a team of investigators in developing and optimizing animal models for understanding the pathobiology of tumor progression. Also, developing novel chemopreventive and immunepreventive approaches to inhibit malignant tumors. In the field of targeted drug discovery, Dr. Rao was the first to show iNOS-, EGFR, ODC, dual COX/5LOX, HMG-R and more recently mPGES-1 select inhibitors as potential chemopreventive agents for colon and other epithelial cancers, and greater efficacy when combined with low-doses of agents with different mechanisms. In the area of dietary factors/ nutritional, immuno-chemoprevention, Dr. Rao established the role of curcumin, farnesol, diosgenin, β-escin, and frondanol to cite a few, as potential chemopreventive agents in colon and pancreatic cancers. With regard to this application, Dr. Rao made a significant effort in the understanding of immunomodulation of colon tumor progression and designed several preventive strategies. Dr. Rao’s laboratory established colon tumor promoting role of Regulatory T cells, importance NK and NKT cells in tumor growth regulation. With regard to NCI concept application, our laboratory will use extensively role of various targets for chemoprevention using natural and synthetic agents including application of prebiotics and selective gut microbes as probitis for the prevention of colorectal cancer.
Dr. Rao has successfully obtained NIH/NCI peer-reviewed funding for over 30 years and his research identified a number of molecular/cellular targets for major epithelial cancer drug development. He has published over 245 articles with over 21,000 citations in lead journals with h-index: 73.