Shiny Nair, PhD

My research is focused in understanding the immune mechanisms linking rare lysosomal diseases, particularly Gaucher disease (GD), with common diseases like cancer. These efforts have provided valuable insights to understand how lipids that accumulates in GD prompt high risk of multiple myeloma and other B cell cancers. Moreover, through these studies, I showed that chronic immune activation against lysolipids might underlie the origin of a subset of human Multiple myeloma, making important conceptual contributions to both Gaucher disease as well as Multiple myeloma pathology. My major motivation has been to understand the common immune mechanism triggered by glycosphingolipids accumulated in rare diseases such as GD to understand the basic pathogenesis of common diseases such as cancer as a foundation for the development of effective therapies.