About

Pramod Sangi Reddy is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Science and Technology from the University of California, Berkeley, obtained in 2007, a M.Tech. in Computer Aided Design and Automation from the Indian Institute of Technology in 2002, and a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in 2002. His research interests include nanoscale charge and energy transport, thermoelectric devices, microscale heat transfer, organic photovoltaics, scanning probe microscopy, and optics. Professor Reddy's work focuses on understanding and manipulating heat and energy transfer at the nanoscale. He has contributed to the development of experimental platforms for atomic-scale heat dissipation studies, nanoscale thermal switches, and molecular heat transfer measurements. His research has led to significant advancements in controlling nanoscale heat flows, with implications for quantum computing, energy conversion, and thermal management. He has been recognized with awards such as the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2012 and the NSF CAREER Award in 2009, reflecting his contributions to the field of micro/nano engineering and thermal sciences.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Immunology
• Gastroenterology
• Bioinformatics
• Microbiology
• Biochemistry
• Oncology
• Internal medicine
• Biology

Selected publications

• Tocilizumab: From Bench to Bedside - A Comprehensive Review.

  PubMed · 2026-05-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Introduction: Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is a key mediator of inflammation and cancer biology. Tocilizumab, an IL-6 receptor blocker, is used to treat autoimmune diseases and has become essential in managing cytokine release syndrome (CRS) associated with CAR-T cell therapy and bispecific antibodies. However, global access to tocilizumab, as well as the cost and uptake of its biosimilars, remains uneven. This review summarizes evidence across three major areas: clinical uses and safety, oncologic and CRS-related applications, and global access and biosimilars. Methods: Using a PRISMA-ScR approach, we mapped published studies, clinical data, and economic reports. We included evidence on tocilizumab's approved and emerging indications; its role in CRS related to immunotherapies; and access, pricing, and biosimilar availability across regions. Results: Tocilizumab continues to demonstrate reliable anti-inflammatory effects in rheumatoid arthritis, giant cell arteritis, and COVID-19, with a consistent safety profile that includes infections, cytopenias, and elevated liver enzymes or lipid levels. In oncology, it is the standard treatment for moderate to severe CRS associated with CAR-T therapy and is increasingly used with bispecific antibodies. Early or prophylactic use may reduce hospitalization without compromising anticancer efficacy. Preclinical and early clinical data also suggest IL-6 blockade may improve responses to immunotherapy, although this remains exploratory. Global access varies widely: FDA- and EMA-approved biosimilars have lowered costs in high-income regions, while affordability and availability remain major barriers in low- and middle-income countries. Conclusions: Tocilizumab now spans autoimmune care, supportive oncology, and early investigational cancer applications. Improving biosimilar access, clarifying CRS management strategies, and expanding high-quality oncologic trials are important next steps.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Inflammatory memory of stem cells: implications for hematologic diseases

  Blood · 2025-06-25 · 2 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT: Immunological memory in adaptive and innate immune cells is well characterized, enabling enhanced responses upon secondary challenges. However, it has only been recently appreciated that the nonimmune target cells of inflammation, particularly organ-specific stem cells (SCs), also exhibit memory of previous inflammatory exposures. Previous inflammation experience imprints on the SCs and influences their regenerative potential and responses to subsequent inflammatory insults. This phenomenon has been observed in hematopoietic, intestinal, and skin epithelial SCs, with profound implications for tissue homeostasis, disease progression, and therapeutic strategies. Herein, we expand and develop the notion of inflammatory memory of SCs and explore recent insights in the field. We discuss the emerging understanding of the molecular underpinnings and their potential clinical and biological implications. Inflammatory memory is driven by spatiotemporal changes in gene loci and transcription regulated by DNA and histones' epigenetic modifications, metabolic reprogramming, and chromatin accessibility changes. Understanding these mechanisms is critical for improving the outcomes of hematologic diseases, hematopoietic SC transplantation, and cellular immunotherapies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Corrigendum to Autophagy differentially regulates tissue tolerance of distinct target organs in graft-versus-host disease models

  Journal of Clinical Investigation · 2025-09-02

  erratumOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Breaking Machine Learning Models with Adversarial Attacks and its Variants

  Proceedings of the ... International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference · 2025-05-14 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Machine learning models can be by adversarial attacks, subtle, imperceptible perturbations to inputs that cause the model to produce erroneous outputs. This tutorial introduces adversarial examples and its variants, explaining why even stateof-the-art models are vulnerable and how this impacts security in AI. It provides an overview of key concepts (such as black-box vs. white-box attack scenarios) and survey common attack techniques and defensive strategies. A hands-on component using Google Colab and the open-source Adversarial Lab toolkit allows attendees to craft adversarial examples and test model robustness in real time. Throughout, we emphasize both the practical skills and the ethical considerations needed to apply adversarial machine learning in a responsiblemanner. Attendees will gain a comprehensive foundationin adversarial attacks and insights into building morerobust, secure machine learning models.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• DBSCAN Clustering for User Pairing in Wireless Networks

  2025-01-06 · 2 citations

  article

  In recent years, machine learning techniques have gained prominence as effective solutions for real-time wireless resource allocation problems that are known to be NP-hard. One specific problem in wireless communication systems is user pairing, which involves selecting users to be scheduled together while optimizing interference reduction and throughput maximization. In this study, we conduct a comprehensive analysis and comparison of various user pairing algorithms, identifying their limitations. We propose an unsupervised learning approach for user clustering utilizing the density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) algorithm. Our proposed method surpasses other scheduling approaches, including k-means clustering-based user pairing and semi-orthogonal user scheduling (SUS), demonstrating significantly superior performance. We provide a comprehensive evaluation of each method’s performance, stability, complexity, and latency. Notably, at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 20dB, our proposed method outperformed the conventional k-means algorithm by 33.8% while consuming 42.2% less resources.

  PublisherDOI

• PD-1 inhibition for relapse after allogeneic transplantation in acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome

  Blood Advances · 2025-04-08 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT: Relapse of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) remains the primary source of mortality after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT). Targeting programmed death-1 (PD-1) for reversing T-cell exhaustion and restoring the graft-versus-leukemia (GVL) effect may have logistical advantages over donor lymphocyte infusion. In a prospective phase 1B clinical trial, pembrolizumab was administered every 3 weeks to 16 patients with AML (n = 12) and MDS (n = 4) in relapse after HCT to assess graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), clinical response, and survival. The median time to relapse after HCT was 5.5 months and the median pretreatment bone marrow blast percentage was 21.5%. The overall response rate was 31.3% for patients receiving pembrolizumab, consisting of 3 complete remissions (18.8%) and 2 partial remissions (13.5%). The median duration of response was 610 days. A significantly greater proportion of patients with mixed CD3 chimerism had a clinical response than those with full donor chimerism (50% vs 0%; P = .03). Immune toxicities were frequent, with 37.5% of patients developing severe (grade 3-4) GVHD after pembrolizumab, of which most had resistance to corticosteroids and contributed to death in 4 patients (25%). The 1-year overall survival (OS) was 37.5% and event-free survival was 31.3%. For AML, 1-year OS was 50.0%. In this trial, PD-1 inhibition led to durable remission in one-third of the patients experiencing early relapse after HCT, suggesting that this approach may augment the GVL response. Responses were exclusively observed in the setting of mixed CD3 donor chimerism. Immune toxicities (GVHD) were a barrier to successful treatment outcome. This trial was registered at www.ClinicalTrials.gov as #NCT03286114.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mitochondrial complex II orchestrates divergent effects in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells

  Journal of Clinical Investigation · 2025-12-14

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Mitochondrial metabolism orchestrates T cell functions, yet the role of specific mitochondrial components in distinct T cell subsets remains poorly understood. Here, we explored the role of mitochondrial complex II (MC II), the only complex from the electron transport chain (ETC) that plays a role in both ETC and metabolism, in regulating T cell functions. Surprisingly, MC II exerts divergent effects on CD4+ and CD8+ T cell activation and function. Using T cell-specific MC II subunit, succinate dehydrogenase A-deficient (SDHA-deficient) mice, we integrated single-cell RNA-seq and metabolic profiling, with in vitro and in vivo T cell functional assays to illuminate these differences. SDHA deficiency induced metabolic changes and remodeled gene expression exclusively in activated T cells. In CD4+ T cells, SDHA loss dampened both oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and glycolysis, impaired cytokine production, proliferation, and reduced CD4+ T cell-mediated graft-versus-host disease after allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT). In contrast, SDHA deficiency in CD8+ T cells reduced OXPHOS but paradoxically upregulated glycolysis and demonstrated enhanced cytotoxic functions in vitro and in vivo. This metabolic reprogramming endowed SDHA-KO CD8+ T cells with superior in vivo antitumor efficacy after immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy and allogeneic SCT. These findings reveal MC II as a bifurcation point for metabolic and functional specialization in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells.

  PublisherDOI

• Tolerance After Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

  Elsevier eBooks · 2025-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Novel regulators of GVHD revealed through microbiome and metabolome patterns across distinct intestinal regions

  Blood · 2025-02-26 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT: Microbial dysbiosis and metabolite changes in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract have been linked to pathogenesis and severity of many diseases, including graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), the major complication of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. However, published studies have only considered the microbiome and metabolome of excreted stool and do not provide insight into the variability of the microbial community and metabolite composition throughout the GI tract or the unique temporal dynamics associated with different gut locations. Because such geographical variations are known to influence disease processes, we used a multi-omics approach to characterize the microbiome and metabolite profiles of gut contents from different intestinal regions in well-characterized mouse models of GVHD. Our analysis validated analyses from excreted stool, but importantly, uncovered new biological insights from the microbial and metabolite changes between syngeneic and allogeneic hosts that varied by GI location and time after transplantation. Our integrated analysis confirmed the involvement of known metabolic pathways, including short-chain fatty acid synthesis and bile acid metabolism, and identified additional functional genes, pathways, and metabolites, such as amino acids, fatty acids, and sphingolipids, linked to GI GVHD. Finally, we validated a biological relevance for one such newly identified microbial metabolite, phenyl lactate, that heretofore had not been linked to GI GVHD. Thus, our analysis of the geographic variability in the intestinal microbiome and metabolome offers new insights into GI GVHD pathogenesis and potential for novel therapeutics.

  PublisherDOI

• A Retrospective Analysis of Advanced Directive Completion and End-of-Life Location in Adult Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Recipients

  Transplantation and Cellular Therapy · 2025-02-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Intestinal tissue intrinsic mechanisms in regulation of GI GVHD

  NIH · $2.5M · 2022–2027

• Baylor College of Medicine Cancer Center - Cancer Center Support Grant

  NIH · $60.1M · 2007–2030

• NIH Grant R01CA143379

  NIH · $739k · 2015

• Targeting antigen presentation to enhance GVL responses after Bone Marrow Transpl

  NIH · $3.4M · 2007–2018

• NIH Grant K08AI052863

  NIH · $468k · 2007

Frequent coauthors

• Chen Liu

  The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University

  283 shared

• James L.M. Ferrara

  Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

  279 shared

• Yaping Sun

  China University of Petroleum, East China

  161 shared

• Tomomi Toubai

  151 shared

• Katherine Oravecz-Wilson

  U-M Rogel Cancer Center

  114 shared

• Yoshinobu Maeda

  Okayama University

  114 shared

• Takanori Teshima

  103 shared

• Sung Won Choi

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  92 shared

Awards & honors

• Young Faculty Award, DARPA (2012)
• CAREER Award, National Science Foundation (2009)
• Cui wins MRS Gold Medal (2017)
• ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award (2018)
• ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, Dakotah Thompson…