Kavitha Gowrishankar
Dr Gowrishankar is an emerging leader in the field of cell therapies and an accomplished molecular biologist and immunologist. She has been developing CAR T cells for the treatment of haematological malignancies at the Westmead Institute and University of Sydney for the last six years and is named on one patent (PCTUS2018/063305) and three provisional patents- for the development of CAR T cells. She is currently leading the team that focuses on preclinical development of various synthetic receptors and combinatorial antigen targeting strategies at the Advanced Cellular Therapeutics laboratory at the Children’s hospital at Westmead. She has internationally recognised expertise, authoring several publications, with over 1500 citations, h index of 20, i10 index of 21. She is a named co-chief investigator in grants that have obtained competitive funding totalling $3.24 millon, including as CIC on the recent MRFF funding for a Phase I clinical trial to test in-house developed CAR T cells for paediatric sarcoma.
Dr Gowrishankar is also a conjoint senior lecturer with the University of Sydney and has supervised several HDR students (either as primary or co-supervisor) (3 PhD students -completed 2 currently enrolled; 4-Honours students completed, 2 MD research students, 2 undergraduate TSP and 3 summer research students-completed). In addition, she leads the Immunotherapy workshop for undergraduate courses for the University and lectures for both undergraduate and post-graduate courses on immunotherapy and has been involved in curriculum development for undergraduate and postgraduate Cancer courses. Dr Gowrishankar is an integral part of the cell therapies program at Westmead.
Abstracts this author is presenting: