Pawar, Nilambari

I am a Research Scientist, and my research focuses on developing a zebrafish patient derived xenograft (zPDX) model for functional precision cancer medicine. We are currently working on renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and have developed zPDX model for response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI). We presented this work at the AACR Annual Meeting, 2025. We are further screening more RCC and other cancer patients and gaining deeper insights to co-relate from all possible molecular perspectives to bring this model from bench-to-bed side for betterment of patients and to help oncologist design better treatment plan for each patient in a personalized way. I have been working with zebrafish as a research model since 2008 and have expertise in developing transgenic zebrafish, different human disease models, like cancer xenografts and kidney disease models which involve micro-injecting cancer cells and morpholinos (for gene manipulation) in zebrafish larvae and embryos, respectively. Other systemic toxicity models like hepatotoxicity, ototoxicity, cardiotoxicity, terato-toxicity etc. were developed in zebrafish for high throughput drug screening for new chemical entities (NCEs). I have experience in drug efficacy studies using these models and in molecular biology techniques, microscopy and imaging, and have set up and managed zebrafish husbandry and microinjection facility. We also focused on angiogenesis which is very essential topic in cancer biology and developed zebrafish efficacy–toxicity model for translational anti-angiogenic drug discovery. With this previous experience, I have relevant training, expertise and motivation necessary to successfully carry out the proposed research project.