Utthara Nayar

Utthara Nayar is a cancer researcher based in Boston, Massachusetts.^[1] Her work focuses specifically on breast cancer.^[2]

Biography

Nayar lived in the country of Oman during her childhood.^[2] She was encouraged to participate in science, with her passion being in biology and physics.^[2]

For her undergraduate degree Nayar attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a part of their biology Honors Program with a major in biology.^[2] She earned her doctorate through Weill Cornell Medical College.^[1] She is employed at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a researcher in the lab of Nikhil Wagle.^[2][3] She is also a member of a team at Harvard Medical School as a research affiliate.^[4]

Research

At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Nayar and her team have been investigating metastatic breast cancer and how hormones affect patient treatment.^[2] For some forms of breast cancer a patient is ER positive, or estrogen receptor positive, meaning that tumors grow as the levels of estrogen in the body increase.^[2] For this type of breast cancer, patients quickly become resistant to the treatment methods available and their bodies stop responding to any medical help they receive, seemingly without any connection.^[3][4] However, Nayar and her team found a link in patients who became resistant to ER positive treatment- many had HER-2 gene mutations.^[3] This possible discovery has spurred on a five-year phase 2 trial by Nayar and her team, investigating the connection between ER positive treatment rejection and the HER-2 gene.^[5]

Publications

Journal Publications

Year	Publication
2013	Nayar, U., Pin Lu, Goldstein, R. L., Vider, J., Ballon, G., Rodina, A., ... Cesarman, E. (2013). Targeting the Hsp90-associated viral oncoproteome in gammaherpesvirus-associated malignancies. Blood, 122(16), 2837–2847. https://doi.org/10.1182/blood-2013-01-479972[6]
2017	Nayar, U., Sadek, J., Reichel, J., Hernandez-Hopkins, D., Akar, G., Barelli, P. J., ... Cesarman, E. (2017). Identification of a nucleoside analog active against adenosine kinase-expressing plasma cell malignancies. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 127(6), 2066–2080. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI83936[7]

Awards and recognition

In 2012 while at Cornell, Nayar was awarded the AACR-Aflac, Inc. Scholar-in-Training Award.^[1]

In 2018 while working at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Nayar was awarded the 2018 Women In Cancer Research Scholar Award by the American Association for Cancer Research for her work with breast cancer.^[8]