Dr. Abdul Rao Has Done Years of Research on Bench to Bedside Translation of Novel Therapeutic Strategies

Dr. Abdul S. Rao, MD, MA, DPhil, served as the Senior Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies at USF Health, and Vice Dean for Research and Graduate Studies for the College of Medicine. At USF Health, Abdul Rao was the leader of the research for the three USF colleges of medicine, nursing and public health. He helped to seamlessly bridge research across USF and USF Health campuses.

Dr. Abdul S. Rao did his medical degree from Dow Medical University, Karachi, Pakistan, in 1983. After completing his residency training in Orthopedic Surgery, Abdul Rao joined the Department of Physiology, Boston University School of Medicine and graduated in 1989 with a M.A., in Physiology. He completed a year of post-doctoral Research Fellowship in the Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Abdul Rao joined the Nuffield Department of Surgery, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, as a Clinical Instructor from 1990-1993. He graduated from the University of Oxford with a D.Phil., (Doctor of Philosophy) in Transplantation Immunology in 1993.

Abdul Rao's area of research interest largely focuses on bench to bedside (and reverse) translation of novel therapeutic strategies aimed at alleviating a clinical problem. He and his group have worked on the protocol for induction of donor-specific tolerance in organ allograft recipients (funded by National Institutes of Health); cellular therapeutic treatment of refractory posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorders (funded by Cancer Research Treatment Foundation); islet cell transplantation to reverse type I insulin-dependent diabetes (funded by National Institutes of Health and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International); transmission of infection following animals to humans (funded by an extramural grant) organ and cell transplantation. Additionally, his group has also been actively involved in basic cellular and molecular biology research in the following areas: induction of tolerance, islet cell transplantation, dendritic and NK cell immunobiology, post-transplant vasculopathy (chronic rejection); liver-derived growth factors; generation of transgenic pigs and xenotransplantation.