Associate Professor Vivek Naranbhai is a leading immunulogist and medical oncologist and clinician-scientist who has been recruited to Monash University (School of Translational Medicine, Dept of Medicine) from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. He undertook his medical training at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, Durban, South Africa concurrently completing a PhD in Virology and was appointed Deputy-director of the Vaccine and Pathogenesis Programme at CAPRISA in Durban before moving to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar to complete a DPhil in immunogenomics (2011-2015) and post-doctoral fellowships in Oxford and then at The Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard & National Cancer Institute (NCI/NIH), USA. He then undertook further clinical training undertaking a residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Fellowship in Haematology/Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital, before being appointed as an Instructor in Medicine and Attending Physician (Haematology-Oncology) at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

A/Prof Naranbhai is the Lab head of the Laboratory of Translational Immunology: The Laboratory of Translational Immunology is focused on optimising antigen delivery and recognition to develop new medicines against infectious diseases and cancers.

He has >95 career publications (Field Weighted Citation Index of 9.85, h-index 38) including lead author papers published in prestigious journals such as Cell (4), Science (1), The Lancet (1), Nature Comms (2), Journal of Clinical Oncology (1), Cancer Cell (1) and Lancet Oncology (1). 

Some of A/Prof Naranbhai’s key contributins include inflammation as a driver of HIV infection, establihingd the international tuberculosis host genetics consortium (ITHGC), defining the genetic regulation of gene expression in neutrophils, definnig how components of antigen presentation machinery mediate activating and inhibitory signalling and described several mechanisms by which genetic variation affects cancer immunotherapy outcomes. He led many of the first COVID-19 sero-epidemiology studies, including the largest cohort study in patients with cancer CANVAX, and in the general population providing key insights into how neutralizing antibodies and T-cells mediate cross strain protection and effecting policy decisions on vaccine selection, timing, and development.

He involved in early immunotherapeutic company creation via roles with venture capital firms and was involved in a leading commercial decentralized clinical trials company in the USA (>1500 employees), as a strategic healthcare partnership leader. 

A/Prof Naranbhai motivated by discovering elegant biology and applying it to reduce human suffering. He derives joy from conceiving and directing ambitious collaborative research focussed on excellence.

A/Prof Naranbhai’s early publications focused on understanding the immune correlates of HIV acquisition in women. In a series of papers, it was found that immune activation was associated with HIV acquisition. This work was performed in the context of a clinical trial of antiviral drugs called tenofovir which we formulated as a gel. During this time, he was Deputy Director of vaccine and pathogenesis at CAPRISA, and orchestrated a range of viral, immune and pharmacologic correlate studies. The network of collaborators he established at this time and training in leveraging basic science for public health benefit are durable outcomes of this work. (To highlight a few: AIDS. 2012 Sep 10;26 (14):1745-53; J Infect Dis. 2012 Oct 1;206(7):993-1001; PLoS One. 2013;8(1):e53251; BMC Infect Dis. 2016 Jan 25;16(1):27)

A second body of work focusses on the genetic determinants of gene expression in human cells. He worked with a team of collaborators in Oxford and was mentored by Adrian Hill (a leading vaccinologist, co-developer of the ‘Oxford’ COVID vaccine), Julian Knight, Helen McShane and Andrew Morris. Their work showed how differences in the genetic code between individuals, affects how much of that gene is expressed and hence why some people may be susceptible to certain diseases and others are not. A/Prof Naranbhai’s training in bioinformatics, statistical genetics and in basic immunology was deepened in Oxford and his network of collaborators further enriched.  (To highlight two papers which have had significant impact on the understanding of gene regulation in specific cells :Nature Communications. 2015 Jul 7;6:7545; Science. 2014 Mar 7;343(6175):1246949)

A major focus of A/Prof Naranbhai’s work has, and continues to be, application of genomic tools to understand disease susceptibility. I co-founded and co-led the International Tuberculosis Host Genetics Consortium which conducted the largest meta-analysis of TB related host genetic studies.  (Book Chapter: Microbiol Spectr. 2016 Oct;4(5). doi: 10.1128/microbiolspec.TBTB2-0011-2016.PMID: 27787193, J Infect Dis. 2014 Feb 15;209(4):500-9. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jit494, EBioMedicine. 2015 Nov;2(11):1619-26. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2015.09.027.PMID: 26870787 and several under review)

Immune cells recognize threats such as viruses or early cancers through specific molecules on the virally infected or cancer cells called Human Leukocyte Antigen, HLA. The HLA system of presentation is encoded for in the most variable part of the human genome. Moreover, this part of the genome is the most replicably associated with human disease yet our knowledge of it remains limited. During my postdoctoral training with Mary Carrington, we elucidated specific aspects of how this immune cell recognition works. (Science. 2018 Jan 5;359(6371):86-90. doi: 10.1126/science.aam8825, J Clin Invest. 2018 Apr 3. pii: 98463. doi: 10.1172/JCI98463)

Applying insights into HLA biology to the area of his clinical training in medical oncology, A/Prof Naranbhai’s led one of the largest studies to date on HLA variation and cancer immunotherapy outcomes, and expanded these efforts in collaboration with others to whole-genome analyses. He has built wide collaborations now across multiple academic institutions and industry allowing the scale of analyses required for discovery of predictive variants in complex traits (The Lancet Oncology. Jan;23(1):172-184. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(21)00582-9, Nature Medicine 2022 Dec; 28(12):2584-2591, Nature Medicine 2022 Dec; 28(12), Nature Genetics 2023 Apr; In press)

During the SARS CoV-2 pandemic, A/Prof Naranbhai established and led several immunology cohort studies including one of the first sero-epidemiology studies in the world and led the largest cohort studies in patients with cancer and the first with boosters (published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and Cancer Cell amongst others). His work in healthy volunteers provided several key insights into the role of neutralizing antibodies and T-cells in mediating cross strain protection (collectively leading to three manuscripts in Cell, and >ten published elsewhere). It was widely covered in the lay press (>100 news articles/TV/radio interviews and thousands of tweets in dozens of countries) and influenced public policy in the USA, Europe, Asia, Australia and many other countries especially by promoting early deployment of boosters to overcome Omicron variant and the need for additional doses in immunocompromised individuals (J Infect Dis. 2020 Sep 9:jiaa579. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiaa579, Cell. 2021 Apr 29;184(9):2372-2383.e9. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.013. Epub 2021 Mar 12, Cell 2022 Jan 6: S0092-8674(21)01496-3. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.12.033, Cancer Cell 2022 Jan 10;;40(1):103-108.e2. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2021.12.002, Cell. 2022 Mar 31;185(7):1259, Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2021)