Dr. Anirban Maitra is currently an Associate Professor of Pathology and Oncology at the Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He is also an affiliate faculty at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, and a Pathologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Maitra graduated from medical school (All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi) in 1996. He earned his stripes as a "Texan" spending five years at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where he completed a three year residency program in Anatomic Pathology, a fellowship year in Pediatric Pathology at the Children's Medical Center, and a credentialing year in Molecular Pathology. The last was spent in the laboratory of Drs. Adi Gazdar and John Minna, both cancer researchers of international renown, where Dr. Maitra developed his continuing interest in the biology of preneoplasia. By the time he had completed his training in Dallas, Dr. Maitra had authored or co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications, including first-author papers in Nature Medicine (5:459-63; 1999), Cancer (85:741-9; 1999), and the American Journal of Pathology (157:1105-11; 2000 and 159:119-30; 2001). He arrived at Johns Hopkins in 2001, to complete a combined research/clinical fellowship in Gastrointestinal/Liver Pathology. The research component of his fellowship was performed under the mentorship of Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti in the Institute of Genetic Medicine, where Dr. Maitra trained in the design and application of high throughput microarray technologies for the study of human genomics. He joined the Division of Gastrointestinal/Liver Pathology as a faculty Instructor in July 2002, was promoted to Assistant Professor of Pathology and Oncology in July 2003, and more recently to Associate Professor, as of January 2006.

Dr. Maitra is the Principal Investigator of an R01 funded laboratory that studies pancreatic cancer, a disease claiming the lives of ~33,000 patients each year in the United States, and over 200,000 individuals worldwide. The overwhelming majorities of patients afflicted with pancreatic cancer have recourse to few therapeutic options, and succumb within weeks to a few months of their diagnosis. Dr. Maitra has dedicated his laboratory career towards a better understanding of the fundamental genetic mechanisms that underlie pancreatic cancer, and the discovery of new therapeutic avenues for this lethal neoplasm. A series of publications from Dr. Maitra and colleagues has systematically catalogued the genomic (Cancer Genetics Cytogenetics, 161:36-50; 2005, Neoplasia, 7:556-62; 2005, Cancer Research 66:7920-28; 2006); transcriptomic (American Journal of Pathology, 161:1152-63; 2003 and 160:1239-49, 2002); and proteomic (Journal of Proteome Research, 3:1042-55, 2004; Molecular Cellular Proteomics, 5:157-71; 2005) alterations in pancreatic cancer, providing a seedbed for the development of early detection biomarkers and targeted therapies. Dr. Maitra has helped elucidate many of the genetic abnormalities that occur in non-invasive precursor lesions (PanINs) during the multistep pathogenesis of pancreatic cancer, leading to the development of a so-called "PanIN-gram" model of histological and molecular progression (reviewed in Annual Review of Pathology Mechanisms of Disease, 3:157-88; 2008). For example, his laboratory was the first to demonstrate that telomeric attrition was one of the earliest discernible molecular alterations in PanINs, uniquely predisposing the pancreatic epithelium for the subsequent development of genetic instability and progression to frank neoplasia (American Journal of Pathology, 161:1541-7; 2002). Dr. Maitra was part of the collaborative team that developed the first genetically engineered mouse model of pancreatic cancer resembling the cognate human disease process (Cancer Cell, 4:437-50; 2003). He was also a member of two international teams of pancreatic pathology experts that outlined the criteria for histological classification of precursor lesions observed in human pancreata (American Journal of Surgical Pathology 28:977-97; 2004), as well as in genetically engineered mice (Cancer Research 66:95-106; 2006).

A major focus of Dr. Maitra's research efforts have centered on the discovery of new therapeutic strategies and drug targets for pancreatic cancer. To this effect, he has developed one of the largest collections of patient-derived low-passage pancreatic cancer xenografts in the country, which provides an unprecedented opportunity for conducting preclinical experimental therapeutics in a biologically relevant setting (Clinical Cancer Research, 12:4652-61; 2006). Dr. Maitra's success in generating patient-derived cancers xenografts has directly resulted in a one-of-a-kind clinical trial on "individualized therapy" for pancreatic cancer (NCT00276744), wherein patients undergoing pancreatic cancer resection receive subsequent chemotherapy based upon the in vivo response of their xenograft to a panel of agents, rather than being administered a "one-size fits all" standard regimen. In a seminal paper was published in Nature (425:846-51; 2003), Dr. Maitra and colleagues described widespread activation of the Hedgehog signaling pathway in a large number of cancers of the gastrointestinal tract, including pancreatic cancers. Subsequently, his laboratory has demonstrated that sustained Hedgehog signaling is required for pancreatic cancer metastases, and inhibition of this pathway with small molecule antagonists can abrogate systemic metastases in pre-clinical models (Cancer Research, 67:2187-96; 2007). Given that the overwhelming majority of pancreatic cancer patients succumb to the effects of systemic metastases, it is no small wonder that over half a dozen pharmaceutical companies are now pursuing Hedgehog targeted therapies based on work that has directly emanated from these studies. More recently, the Maitra laboratory has identified loss of a p53-regulated microRNA - miR-34a - as a common molecular event in pancreatic cancer (Molecular Cell, 26:745-52; 2007), and restitution of this microRNA might provide a novel therapeutic strategy in this malignancy.

While pancreatic cancer the thrust of Dr. Maitra's research, his training in high throughput genomics has led to some highly innovative studies in other areas as well. For example, in 2004, Dr. Maitra described the design and implantation of a sequencing microarray for mitochondrial DNA sequencing ("MitoChip") (Genome Research, 14:812-9; 2004). The MitoChip has dramatically shortened the time frame required for mitochondrial DNA sequencing compared to conventional strategies, from as long as two weeks to less than 3 days. In a series of publications, Dr. Maitra and colleagues have described the successful application of this MitoChip for mitochondrial DNA sequencing in human cancers and in preneoplastic lesions (Molecular Cancer, 5:73; 2006, International Journal of Gastrointestinal Cancer, 37:57-64; 2006; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104:7540-45; 2007). The MitoChip is available as an off-the-shelf product, and investigators worldwide are using this platform not only in the context of human cancer, but also for studying other ailments related to mitochondrial dysfunction, such as Alzheimer disease and mitochondrial myopathies. In 2005, Dr. Maitra utilized the MitoChip as well as other high-resolution sequencing technologies to catalog the prevalence of genomic alterations in the federally sanctioned panel of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines. This study, published in Nature Genetics, is a landmark in the field since it describes widespread abnormalities in the existing panel of hESC lines (37:1099-103; 2005). As is well known, there has been intense debate in the United States about the adequacy of the existing 20-odd hESCs, and the lack of federal funding for supporting the derivation of new lines. This paper unequivocally established that the existing hESCs are not adequate for biomedical research, and underscored the need for developing new lines.

In addition to his prolific research career, Dr. Maitra is also a practicing gastrointestinal pathologist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Current Molecular Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal that publishes insightful reviews on topics related to molecular medicine and human disease (www.bentham.org/cmm). Dr. Maitra is also a Section Editor for Laboratory Investigation, the Academy's flagship journal dedicated to basic and applied research, where he has helped develop the new section titled "Pathobiology in Focus" into a platform for cutting edge academic commentary for the USCAP readership. Dr. Maitra has co-authored two chapters in the pathology textbook that bears Dr. Cotran's name - Robbins and Cotran's Pathologic Basis of Disease, and is in the process of updating these chapters for the upcoming 8th edition of this "bible". He has also co-authored three chapters for the recently published 8th edition of the companion textbook Basic Pathology. Dr. Maitra has served as ad-hoc reviewer on numerous study sections for the NIH, and delivered over two dozen invited lectures, including talks in Japan, Korea, China, and Germany. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including three from the Society for Pediatric Pathology (Gordon L. Vawter Award, Harry L. Neustein Award, and the Lotte Strauss prize), which he received during his residency and fellowship training years. More recently, Dr. Maitra has been the recipient of the Academy's Benjamin Castleman Award in 2004, the Outstanding Young Scientist Award for the state of Maryland in 2006, and Eugene DiMagnio Presidential Award for Junior Faculty from the American Pancreatic Association in 2007. The most important contribution of Dr. Maitra to the fields of pathology and cancer research has been, and continues to be, the mentoring of postdoctoral fellows and residents, several of whom now hold faculty positions and are pursuing their independent careers as the next generation of physician scientists.