Dharam Ablashi


Dharam V. Ablashi is an American biomedical researcher born in India. He is best known for his co-discovery of Human herpesvirus 6, an immunosuppressive and neurotropic virus that can cause encephalitis and seizures during a primary infection or when reactivated from latency in immunosuppressed patients. In 2014 Ablashi et al. reclassified HHV-6 into HHV-6A and HHV-6B based on his involvement in various diseases that is HHV-6A in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease, and Multiple Sclerosis, and HHV-6B in DRESS transplantation and that is Kidney, Liver and Bone Marrow transplantation. He has contributed more than 95 papers on HHV-6, most of which appeared in top medical journals and has authored or co-authored over 300 journal articles on herpes viruses. He is internationally known for his research on Human and Simian herpesviruses and has also been a major contributor to research in HIV, Epstein-Barr virus and the field of immunovirology.
Ablashi co-founded the International House of Rhode Island in 1961 while he was a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island. The house recently celebrated 53 years of existence. The house continues to provide a home to international students where they meet American families. Ablashi co-founded the American Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or AACFS and recently finished a term as President. He also co-founded the International Association for Research on Epstein-Barr Virus and Associated Diseases and served for many years as Secretary, Treasurer and on the Board of Directors. Ablashi is the current Scientific Director of the and a reviewer for professional journals in microbiology and virology.
Ablashi was born in Lahore, India and earned his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine at Panjab University Veterinary College. He then received his Diploma in Bacteriology from the Indian Veterinary Research Institute/affiliated with University in the UK before moving to the United States, where he earned his Master of Science degree in Pathology and Virology at the University of Rhode Island. After completing his post-doctorate fellowship in the Department of Animal Pathology at the University of Rhode Island, Ablashi continued as a Research Associate at URI for one more year before working at as a microbiologist studying Marek's disease of chickens, caused by a herpes virus, and later at Flow Laboratories in Rockville, Maryland to study human cytomegalovirus infections. In June 2018, he received an honorary doctoral degree in science from the University of Rhode Island at Kingston because of his lifetime achievements in research.

HHV-6 Research

In 1969, Ablashi became a researcher at the National Cancer Institute, NIH. In 1986, while working in Dr. Robert Gallo’s lab, Ablashi, S. Zaki Salahuddin and Gallo together discovered HHV-6; later found to cause Roseola, an infantile disease. He retired from NCI in 1992, but continued serving as an Adjunct Professor of Microbiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine until 2008. He co-edited three books on Human Herpesvirus 6 and served as a consultant to various biomedical companies; as well as NASA, W.H.O. and the United Nations. In 1994 he became Senior Scientist and then Director of Herpesvirus Programs at and Coordinator of DNA virus studies in the laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Virology at the National Cancer Institute.
In 2004, Ablashi became the first Scientific Director of the HHV-6 Foundation. In 2005, he established the first-ever extensive HHV-6 & 7 repository of reagents at the HHV-6 Foundation with the help of generous biospecimen donations from his international colleagues. The Foundation makes these reagents available to any scientist and helps researchers interested in studying HHV-6 by offering pilot grants and consulting on HHV-6 matters.

Awards

Among the many distinguished awards received by Ablashi is the Fogarty International Fellow in 1973 to work at the W.H.O. Cancer Agency in Lyon, France, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Conference on HHV-6, HHV-7 and HHV-8 in Paris, France in 2001, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Conference on HHV-6 and HHV-7 in Barcelona, Spain in 2006, and also in 2006 the board of directors of the HHV-6 Foundation established the “Dharam Ablashi Lifetime Achievement Award” to be given every other year to an investigator who has contributed both extraordinary work and exemplary leadership in the field of HHV-6 research, the Achievement Award from New Jersey CFS Association Inc. in 2007, and the IACFS Rudy Perpich Memorial Achievement Award in 2007
Ablashi has been a member of many professional societies, e.g. American Association for Cancer Research, American Society for Microbiology, International EBV Association and IACFS Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine. He is also the co-inventor of three U.S. patents.

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