David Vasir, PhD

David Vasir PhD, Senior Research Analyst, PHEN, earned his Bachelor of Science degree at University of St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland, U.K IN 1981 and his Master of Science Degree at University of Wales College of medicine Wales, UK in 1985. He then went on to earn his Doctor of Philosophy at Jesus College & Oxford University Medical School, U.K in 1991. Dr. Vasir has been an investigator on several cancer vaccine programs where he designed and implemented number of immunological based assays to monitor the pre- and post-vaccination immunological status of patients with breast, renal ovarian carcinomas, and patients with multiple myeloma in cancer vaccine clinical trials. Majority of these analysis pertained to a detailed pre- and post-vaccination analysis of the immune status as determined by Th1 and Th2 immune responses, levels and functions of regulatory T cells as determined by surface markers, and FOXP3 expression and specific and non-specific immunological analysis. In addition, Dr. Vasir has extensively studied ex-vivo the immunobiology of antigen induced regulatory T cells from their phenotypic characteristics using six color flow cytometry analysis, to their invitro functional properties, their interaction with antigen presenting cells, detailed Th1 and Th2 cytokine profiles of segregated populations of regulatory T cells using multiplex arrays, use of various strategies to reverse the suppressive properties of these cells. Dr. Vasir also investigated the identification of specific microRNAs and kinases in six color sorted regulatory T cells isolated from the ascites of patients with advanced ovarian cancer, identification and targeting of cancer stem cells using small molecules, isolation, and characterization of stem cells for regenerative medicine.