Human Oncology & Pathogenesis Program

The Santosha Vardhana Lab

Santosha Vardhana, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor

The Vardhana lab explores how metabolites regulate immune cell homeostasis, particularly within tumors. We use a combination of traditional immunology, synthetic biology, metabolomics, and bioinformatics to answer fundamental biological questions about the regulation of immune responses with the goal of applying these strategies broadly for the treatment of cancer. Our team is made up of a diverse group of scientists and physicians with backgrounds in immunology, cancer biology, metabolism, and molecular genetics, but we are enthusiastic about integrating members with expertise across physical, life, and computer sciences to achieve our goal of taking novel experimental approaches to understand the complexity of host immunity.

Research Projects

Featured News

In the Lab

3D illustration of T cells surrounding a cancer cell.

Study Shows How Immune Cells Lose Their Power to Fight Tumors

Researchers discover why cancer immunotherapies often fail to finish the job.

Immune Status Could Determine Efficacy of COVID-19 Therapies

Emerging evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 can drive a diverse array of immune processes, raising the risk that immunosuppressant agents that are in cl...

In the Lab

The Many Faces of the Immune Response to COVID-19: How Cancer Research Is Contributing to a Deeper Understanding

During the COVID-19 pandemic, MSK doctors and researchers are applying their knowledge about immunology toward the development of treatments.

Publications Highlights

Vardhana S, Hwee M, Berisa M, Wells DK, Yost KE, King B, Smith M, Herrera PS, Chang HY, Satpathy AT, van den Brink M, Cross JR, Thompson CB. Impaired mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation limits the self-renewal of T-cells exposed to persistent antigen. Nat Immunol 2020, July 13. Doi: 10.1038/s41590-020-0725-2. PMID 32661364. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32661364

Lee CY, Shah MK, Hoyos D, Solovyov A, Douglas M, Taur Y, Maslak PG, Babady NE, Greenbaum B, Kamboj M, Vardhana SA. Prolonged SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with lymphoid malignancies. Cancer Discov. 2022 Jan;12(1):62-73. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-21-1033. PMID 34753749. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34753749/

Lyudovyk O, Kim JY, Qualls D, Hwee MA, Lin YH, Boutemine SR, Elhanati Y, Solovyov A, Douglas M, Chen E, Babady NE, Ramanathan L, Vedantam P, Bandlamudi C, Gouma S, Wong P, Hensley SE, Greenbaum B, Huang AC, Vardhana SA. Impaired humoral immunity is associated with prolonged COVID-19 despite robust CD8 T cell responses. Cancer Cell. 2022 May 30:S1535-6108(22)00226-4. PMID: 35679859. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35679859/

Belk JA, Yao W, Ly N, Freitas KA, Chen YT, Shi Q, Valencia AM, Shifrut E, Kale N, Yost KE, Duffy CV, Daniel B, Hwee MA, Miao Z, Ashworth A, Mackall CL, Marson A, Carnevale J, Vardhana SA, Satpathy AT. Genome-wide CRISPR screens of T cell exhaustion identify chromatin remodeling factors that limit T cell persistence. Cancer Cell. 2022 Jul 11; 40(7):768-786. PMID: 35750052. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35750052/

Vardhana S, Arnold PK, Rosen BP, Chen Y, Carey BW, Huangfu D, Fontaine CC, Thompson CB, Finley LWS. Glutamine independence is a selectable feature of pluripotent stem cells. Nat Metab. 2019 Jul;1(7):676-687. PMID 31511848. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31511848

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People

Santosha Vardhana, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor

The Vardhana Lab studies how nutrient availability, uptake and metabolism regulates host immune responses during cancer development and immunotherapy.
PhD, New York University

[email protected]: Email Address
646-888-2703: Office Phone
View physician profile: Physician profile

Members

Yan-Ting (Kevin) Chen — Yan-Ting Chen
PhD Student

Lauren Melendez

Research Technician

Luis Felipe Somarribas Patterson

Research Fellow

Lab Alumni

Lab Affiliations

Achievements

Chief Medical Oncology Fellow, Internal Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (2014)
Young Investigator Award, American Society of Clinical Oncology (2016)
Senior Fellow, Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy (2017)
Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists (2019)
MSKCC Award for Teaching Excellence (2019)

NCI K08 Mentored Career Development Award (2020)
SARS-CoV-2 Research Project Award, Pershing Square Cohn Cancer Research Alliance (2020)
Josie Robertson Investigator (2021-2026)

Open Positions

To learn more about available postdoctoral opportunities, please visit our Career Center

To learn more about compensation and benefits for postdoctoral researchers at MSK, please visit Resources for Postdocs

Career Opportunities

Our lab actively looking looking for new members.

Apply now

Get in Touch

[email protected]

Lab Head Email
646-888-2703

Office Phone

Disclosures

Doctors and faculty members often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community.

MSK requires doctors and faculty members to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public.

Santosha Vardhana discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

Generate Biomedicines, Inc.
Professional Services and Activities

The information published here is a complement to other publicly reported data and is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.

This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2023 through disclosure submission in spring 2024). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.

Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at [email protected].

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