Rabindra Tirouvanziam, Ph.D.

Currently an Instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine, I have been a long-term associate of the Herzenberg Laboratory which currently hosts my reasearch group, featuring two postdoctoral fellows, one graduate student and one technician.  My work is focused on understanding the pathobiology of chronic human inflammatory disease through the functional analysis of cells and fluids from patients.  My approach consists in developing minimally invasive, non-artefactual protocols for human sample collection and processing, combined with high-content “phenomic” platforms using digital flow cytometry (the specialty of the Laboratory), image cytometry and mass spectrometry, so as to provide direct, yet rich snapshots of human pathophysiology.  This approach has been fully validated in the context of the fatal disease cystic fibrosis, starting with the observation of novel redox, functional and signaling dysfunctions in a subset of inflammatory cells (neutrophils) and leading to the development of an experimental treatment, currently in a multicenter phase 2b trial, as well as several novel options for intervention.  Further collaborative applications of this direct “phenomic” approach in the contexts of asthma, allergy and autism spectrum disorders have yielded novel biomarkers for disease monitoring and most importantly, novel mechanistic insights into disease mechanisms at play in patients.