Ashim Malhotra, PhD

Dr. Malhotra is a senior fellow at the Departments of Surgery and Cell Biology at the New York University School of Medicine. He received a Baccalaureate degree in Pharmacy in 2000 and a Doctorate in Life Sciences in 2006 from St. John’s University in New York. From 2006 to early 2010, at the NYU School of Medicine, Dr. Malhotra trained with Dr. Michael Schlame, a world renowned figure in cardiolipin research. During this period he worked on elucidation of the molecular mechanism of Barth Syndrome, which is a genetic cardiomyopathy in children that arises due to phospholipid deficiencies. Dr. Malhotra and his colleagues discovered the first potential therapeutic drug target for Barth Syndrome, work that received wide acclaim and media coverage. Dr. Malhotra has been invited to a number of talks at international scientific meetings and is well regarded in the field of Barth Syndrome research. His current research interests lie in pancreatic and liver disorders and together with Dr. George Miller of the Department of Surgery at the NYU School of Medicine, he investigates the role of the immune component and dendritic cells in exacerbation of hepatic and pancreatic disease. The recent report of Dr. Malhotra and his colleagues published in the 2010 April issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology highlighted for the first time a potential target for therapeutic intervention to prevent the spread of cancer to the liver, a study that again received wide media attention. Dr. Malhotra is the proud recipient of two foundation grants, one from the Barth Syndrome Foundation (2009) and a more recent one from the Pancreas Foundation (2010). In the past, he was commissioned to write science columns for New York based newspapers and taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in Biology at various colleges of the City and the State University of New York.