Abhishek Garg

Prof. Garg is currently head of the Laboratory for Cell Stress & Immunity and Research Assistant Professor at Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine at KU Leuven (Belgium). During his PhD and postdoc, he played an instrumental role in elucidating novel mechanisms that make cancer cell death immunogenic during anticancer therapy. He did pioneering work on the links between endoplasmic reticulum stress, autophagy, apoptosis, necroptosis and danger signals during immunogenic cell death (ICD) in cancer.

His lab focusses on studying the cell stress-immunity cycle in cancer by applying novel reverse translational approaches powered by multi-omics and spatial mapping, to create innovative immunotherapy or biomarker solutions against hard-to-treat tumors. His lab has recently made high-impact discoveries on exceptional T cell hypofunctional states, spatial cross-talk between myeloid cells-T cells, and multi-dimensional determinants of immunotherapy responses, especially in “immune-cold” tumors. This helped create an innovative anticancer vaccine, first-in-class blood-screening assay, reverse translationally-designed macrophage-targeting immunotherapy, and AI-driven immune biomarkers.

Prof. Garg (total citations >26000, h-index >58) is amongst world's top 1% highly cited researchers (Clarivate 2023), and top 5 most-cited researchers in ICD research (Zhou et al. Front Pharmacol 2022). His research has been recognized by various awards or fellowships: 41st Prix Galien award for Pharmacological Research, KU Leuven Research Council Award, European Society of Photobiology Young Investigator Award, European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) ST Fellowship, FWO Postdoctoral Fellowship, FWO-McKinsey & Company Scientific Prize, KU Leuven Post-doctoral Mandate, and Commonwealth Shared Scholarship Scheme. He is also editor-in-chief of Genes & Immunity journal (Springer-Nature).