Anusha Ganesan MD

Dr. Preethi Ganesan is a hematologist/oncologist at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego and an adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine. She provides inpatient care to patients with leukemia and lymphoma, which are her clinical interests. Her research is focused on studying the dynamic interaction between the tumor immune-microenvironment and cancer stem cells that drive relapse. She seeks to investigate immune responses in pediatric tumors, with the ultimate goal of finding a novel immunotherapy.

During her fellowship at Rady Children's and UC San Diego, Dr. Ganesan evaluated the molecular profile of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes isolated from patients with cancer and discovered that a distinct subset of T cells predicts improved patient survival (in press, Nature Immunology). In her doctoral work, using patient tumor samples and a transgenic mouse model of cancer, she demonstrated the role of T regulatory cells in propelling tumor growth and mechanistically demonstrated that this was mediated by inhibition of anti-tumor CD8 cytotoxic T lymphocyte recruitment and function within tumors.

Dr. Ganesan completed her pediatric residency and doctoral program in tumor immunology, both in the United Kingdom. Among her honors and accomplishments, she received the Ray Owen Award for Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar in 2017, a Hyundai Hope on Wheels Research Scholar grant in 2016, and a Berkeley Fellowship, awarded by University College London and Gonville & Caius College Cambridge, in 2013.