Geneticist Raju Chaganti, PhD, is an emeritus member of the Cell Biology Program in the Sloan Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering. In a career spanning more than three decades, Dr. Chaganti has explored the natural history of genomic instability in cancer cells and its implication for both the clinical behavior of tumors and normal cellular development. 

The tools to identify, measure, and analyze the mechanisms of genomic instability have evolved remarkably over the past 30 years, and part of Dr. Chaganti’s research effort has been to integrate these evolving methodologies into his analyses. He has explored the role of genome instability in the context of B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas and male germ cell tumors, both of which arise in differentiating stem cells and provide unusual opportunities to address neoplastic transformation in conjunction with normal and abnormal differentiation of stem cells. More recently, he has become interested in clear cell renal cell carcinoma as a model for genetic analysis of tumor metastasis and a treatment-resistant cancer.

Dr. Chaganti was born in Samalkot, Andhra, India in 1933. He received his Bachelor of Science with honors from Andhra University in 1954, his Master of Science from Andhra University in 1955, and his Doctor of Philosophy from Harvard University in 1964.