Fatah Kashanchi
Ph.D.
Dr. Kashanchi obtained his Ph.D. from Dr. Charles Wood, and trained under Dr. Susumu Tonegawa at MIT (Nobel Laureate 1987 for Physiology and Medicine). He is currently a Professor and Director at the George Mason University’s Laboratory of Molecular Virology. He has obtained more than $15.8 M in funding (NIH, DOD, DOE, and Keck) since his departure from NIH’s intramural program in 2000. He has published more than 218 peer-reviewed manuscripts (h index = 57) and served as an editorial board and reviewer for journals such as JBC, Retrovirology, J. Virol, Virology, NAR, 4 PLoS Journals, Cell, Molecular Cell, Nature Medicine, Nature communications, Scientific Report and Science Translational Medicine.
His lab focuses on understanding the mechanism of viral gene expression in human viruses and how the virus and the host control the dynamics of fundamental machineries needed for viral replication and/or host survival, including pathways that leads to transcription and chromatin remolding using in vitro reconstituted DNA/RNA elements. His lab has also contributed to general understanding of how these machineries are different in T-cells vs. myeloid cells. In recent years, his lab has additionally been focusing on exosomes secreted from HIV and HTLV infected cells, as well as 7 other RNA and DNA virus infections (through collaborations) and validation of data using in vitro functional analysis and humanized mouse models. Since 1999, Dr. Kashanchi has trained more than 23 postodcs, 29 Ph.D students and 57 MS and undergrad students. Many of these students have continued as postdocs, and obtained Tenure-track academic appointments. Finally, he is a regular NIH study section member and has served on 143 panels since 2000, where he chaired or co-chaired 17 panels.
