Khawaja Fareed

Most of my career has been spent assessing the risk and clinical impact of infections in cancer patients, with specific emphasis on viral infections in hematopoietic cell transplant recipients (HCT) and more recently chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR T cell) recipients. I have primarily focused on clinical studies, investigational trials and translational studies. As am Infectious Diseases fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center, my projects focused on seasonal coronavirus and respiratory syncytial virus infection in HCT recipients. I worked to validate the use of the immunodeficiency scoring index (ISI) in HCT recipients infected with seasonal coronavirus. This experience in respiratory viral infections has allowed me to participate and design clinical trials to assess the efficacy of new therapies or novel treatment strategies for parainfluenza and influenza infected patients. As faculty, due to my interest in HCT patients I worked closely with my mentor to analyze outcomes of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections in HCT in the era of effective chemoprophylaxis; we were able to demonstrate the survival benefits associated with the use of chemoprophylaxis in HCT recipients who were at high risk of CMV reactivation. To better understand the immunologic markers for CMV infection in HCT patients with and without chemoprophylaxis, I designed a translational study to correlate CMV infection with immune response using a commercially available assay in HCT recipients with low levels of CMV in blood. After severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic, I worked closely with my colleagues to publish data on COVID-19 outbreaks amongst hospital staff and patients, sterilization of the environment to protect against COVID-19 spread, outcomes of COVID-19 in HCT recipients and validation of the ISI to predict outcomes in HCT patients infected with COVID-19. I also worked closely to study the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination in our cancer patients, and advised on vaccine practices for cancer, HCT and CAR T cell recipients. Lastly, due to the rising rate of infectious complications in CAR T cell recipients my team has focused on measuring the rate of certain infections, with emphasis on CMV, human herpes virus 6 (HHV-6), invasive mold and respiratory viral infections. Our data has already demonstrated the importance of CMV infections on CAR T cell recipients and may set the basis for a prophylaxis trial in the future. This data also set the basis for new prophylactic protocols for similar therapies in patients with refractory cancers. Much of my work has helped me better understand the complex nature of the patients at MD Anderson and address the multiple infectious complications they may encounter.