About
Professor Rajiv Khanna obtained his doctorate degree from India and undertook his post-doctoral training at QIMR Berghofer. He is the Coordinator of QIMR Berghofer Centre for Immunotherapy and Vaccine Development. He holds Senior Principal Research Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and was also appointed as Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland and Griffith University, Brisbane. Professor Khanna is a Fellow of Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.
Area of Interest
The primary focus of my research group has been human immune regulation. The major goals of our laboratory are to obtain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms by which the human immune response to viral infections and human cancers may be generated, augmented and applied to the treatment of these diseases.
We have used Epstein-Barr virus-associated diseases as a model to understand how cellular immune response in humans responds to persistent viral infections. Over the last 15 years, we have successfully translated our laboratory research towards the development of novel immunotherapeutic strategies for the treatment of virus-associated cancers.
Our group has successfully completed multiple clinical trials and is currently involved in three new clinical trials which involves adoptive transfer of autologous virus-specific T cells in patients with different clinical indications (e.g. nasopharyngeal carcinoma, glioblastoma and post-transplant infectious complications). We also have a highly successful research program to develop T cell based therapeutic and prophylactic strategies for human cytomegalovirus (CMV)-associated diseases.