Bindra named Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Therapeutic Radiology
Dr. Ranjit S. Bindra, a physician-scientist at Yale School of Medicine and Scientific Director of the Yale Brain Tumor Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital, was recently appointed the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Therapeutic Radiology.
Dr. Bindra received his undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale College in 1998, and both his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Yale School of Medicine in 2007. He completed his medical internship, radiation oncology residency, and post-doctoral research studies at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 2012, after which he was recruited to join the faculty of the Department of Therapeutic Radiology at Yale School of Medicine.
Dr. Bindra’s research program uses cutting edge technology to identify DNA repair and metabolic defects in tumors that can be exploited for therapeutic interventions across a range of cancers. For example, he led a team of four major laboratories at Yale in a study which reported that mutations in the enzymes, isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 and 2- (IDH1/2), induce a DNA repair defect which can be targeted with a class of drugs that inhibit poly(ADP)-ribose polymerase (PARP). This work has received international attention and has revealed a novel link between cancer cell metabolism and DNA repair. His research has been published in top tier journals, including Nature, Nature Communications, and Science Translational Medicine, and has received international attention due to its major implications for the treatment of a variety of cancers. Dr. Bindra is now translating this work directly into patients in multiple phase I/II clinical trials, on many of which he serves as principal investigator (PI), co-PI, or co-I.
As a biotech entrepreneur, Dr. Bindra has founded co-founded several companies based on work from his lab and collaborators at Yale, including Cybrexa Therapeutics, Athena Therapeutics, Aztek Bio, and B3 Therapeutics. Of note, Cybrexa is now in phase I clinical trials testing a low pH-targeting peptide drug conjugate in patients with metastatic solid tumors.
