Abhishek Garg

Prof. Abhishek D. Garg is currently Assistant Professor at Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine (KU Leuven, Belgium) and head of the Laboratory for Cell Stress & Immunity also at KU Leuven. Dr. Garg did his post-doctoral training at KU Leuvn, combined with research visitations at University of Helsinki, Finland, and De Duve Institute, Belgium, after receiving his PhD from KU Leuven. During his PhD-postdoc stints, Dr. Garg played an instrumental role in elucidating novel mechanisms that make cancer cell death immunogenic in the context of anticancer therapy. He worked on uncovering the links between endoplasmic reticulum stress, autophagy, apoptosis/necroptosis, and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) or danger signals in dying cancer cells. This work resulted in creation of innovative dendritic cell (DC) vaccines against glioblastoma.

His lab focuses on applying novel reverse translational approaches (i.e. human data to pre-clinical validation) to create innovative immunotherapy or biomarker solutions against hard-to-treat immunotherapy resistant tumors and eventually pave way for the forward translation of these solutions toward the clinic. His lab is working closely with oncologists (at home & abroad) for translation toward early-stage clinical trials.

His >100 publications have been cited >20,000 times (h-index >50). He has delivered >40 lectures at various (inter)national conferences or institutional/company seminars. Dr. Garg’s contributions have been recognized by the 41st Prix Galien award for Pharmacological Research (Belgium, 2023), KU Leuven Research Council Award (2016), European Society of Photobiology (ESP) Young Investigator Award (2013), and FWO-McKinsey & Company Scientific Prize (2012).