Research Summary
My primary research interest is to develop effective strategies that can selectively target “altered energy producing pathways” or “metabolic reprogramming” in disease conditions such as cancer and liver fibrosis.
Liver cancer: Our aim is to develop an effective antiglycolytic strategy that can selectively and specifically disrupt tumor metabolism and improve the therapeutic outcome of HCC patients.
Breast cancer: Our goal is to revolutionize treatment regimens by replacing interventions that are challenged by lack of efficacy or increased toxicity”. With my background in cancer metabolism and collaboration with Drs. Bhujwalla and Dr.Wu, we intend to develop a novel framework whereby cancer metabolism could be minimally perturbed to trigger host immune response.
Liver fibrosis: The long term goal is to develop effective therapeutic strategies for liver diseases such as fibrosis/cirrhosis by selective targeting of “energy metabolism” in hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) that exhibit uncontrolled activation.
Clinical Trials
Learn more about clinical trials at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Selected Publications
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Gajendiran P, Vega LI, Itoh K, Sesaki H, Vakili MR, Lavasanifar A, Hong K, Mezey E, Ganapathy-Kanniappan S. Elevated mitochondrial activity distinguishes fibrogenic hepatic stellate cells and sensitizes for selective inhibition by mitotropic doxorubicin. J Cell Mol Med. 2018 Apr;22(4):2210-2219. doi:10.1111/jcmm.13501. Epub 2018 Feb 4. PubMed PMID: 29397578; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5867155
Ganapathy-Kanniappan S. Linking tumor glycolysis and immune evasion in cancer: Emerging concepts and therapeutic opportunities. Biochim Biophys Acta. Reviews on Cancer. 2017 Aug;1868(1):212-220. doi: 10.1016/j.bbcan.2017.04.002. Epub 2017 Apr 8. Review. PubMed PMID: 28400131
Fu D, Geschwind JF, Karthikeyan S, Miller E, Kunjithapatham R, Wang Z, Ganapathy-Kanniappan S. Metabolic perturbation sensitizes human breast cancer to NK cell-mediated cytotoxicity by increasing the expression of MHC class I chain-related A/B. Oncoimmunology. 2015 Jan 14;4(3):e991228. eCollection 2015 Mar. PubMed PMID: 25949910; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4404839
BOOK/Monograph Published: Advances in GAPDH Protein Analysis: a Functional and Biochemical Approach. Shanmugasundaram Ganapathy-Kanniappan. Nature Springer Publishers. ISBN: 9811073406; ISBN13: 9789811073403, Pp-115. 2018
eBook: Cancer Metabolism: Molecular Targeting and Implications for Therapy edited by Shanmugasundaram Ganapathy-Kanniappan, Frontiers in Oncology and Frontiers in Pharmacology Publishers, 2017.
