Padmini Ranasinghe, MD

Fyza Shaikh is an Assistant Professor in Cancer Immunology in the Department of Oncology in the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. She joined the faculty after completing her fellowship in medical oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (JHSOM) and residency in internal medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center as part of the ABIM research pathway. She received her MD and PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. The Shaikh lab at JHSOM is focused on how the microbiome impacts host immunological responses to tumorigenesis and anti-tumor responses to immunomodulatory agents. The lab uses a combination of translational approaches using samples collected from human cohort studies and clinical trials as well as murine models to ask more detailed mechanistic questions and works across multiple tumor types (melanoma, lung, esophageal, head and neck, etc). The overall approach uses combination of clinical, computational, and lab-based techniques using a rich biorepository containing clinically annotated metadata with known and putative biomarkers of ICI response, such as PD-L1 and tumor mutational burden, paired with longitudinal fecal and plasma samples that correlate with clinical milestones (i.e. response/nonresponse by imaging and treatment-related toxicity). The goal is to focus on microbial functionality and build defined bacterial consortia that can then be tested in murine models to define colonization, metabolomics, and intra-tumoral immune response. This translational approach, with cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of human samples, paired with mechanistic studies in murine models, has the potential to address both limitations in previously published studies and generate new hypotheses to make advances in this field and improve ICI responses for patients with advanced malignancies.

Dr. Syed joins the Community Radiology Division from Eastern Radiologists in Greenville, NC where he also served as an Affiliate Associate Professor of Radiology at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. He received his Medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine. Dr. Syed completed his radiology residency at Tufts Medical Center, followed by a Cross-sectional Body Imaging fellowship at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Syed also has a M.S. in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Syed is a radiologist with subspecialty expertise in gastrointestinal and genitourinary imaging.

Dr. Ming-Tseh Lin is an associate professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and serves as the associate director of the Department of Pathology’s Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory.A molecular pathologist, Dr. Lin is an expert in the development and validation of new assays, including the clinical application of next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms.Because he initially practiced as a hematologist and bone-marrow transplant specialist, Dr. Lin has a unique perspective on molecular diagnostics.Dr. Lin earned his medical and doctoral degrees at National Taiwan University Medical School and Hospital (Taipei), where he trained in internal medicine and hematology. He completed pathology residencies at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Albany Medical College, as well as two pathology fellowships at Hopkins.Dr. Lin has published more than 100 academic journal articles.