LABORATORY OF
CELL STRESS & IMMUNITY

Prof. Garg is Research Associate Professor at Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine and Group Leader of the Lab for Cell Stress & Immunity at KU Leuven (Belgium). He is also Director of the RETROFIT innovation platform as well as Board Member of the PharmAbs innovation platform. He did his post-doctoral research at KU Leuven (2012-2018), University of Helsinki, Finland (2013) and De Duve Institute, Belgium (2017-18), after receiving his PhD (2012). During his PhD-postdoc, he played an instrumental role in elucidating high-impact mechanisms that make cancer cell death immunogenic in the context of anticancer therapy. He worked on uncovering the links between endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, autophagy, apoptosis/necroptosis and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) or danger signals in dying cancer cells i.e., immunogenic cell death (ICD). This resulted in creation of innovative dendritic cell (DC) vaccines against glioblastoma. 

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His lab focusses on studying the cell stress-immunity cycle in cancer by applying novel reverse translational approaches (i.e., human data and AI-informed pre-clinical research), to create next-generation (personalised) immunotherapy solutions against hard-to-treat tumours. His lab strives to constantly pave the way for the forward translation of these innovative solutions toward the clinic as well as the industry. For this, his lab is working closely with oncologists (both home & abroad), biotech entrepreneurs, research valorization managers and biotech/pharma stakeholders. 

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More than 74% of Prof. Garg's publications are in the top 25% journals or are amongst the top 25% most cited (Scopus). This contributes to his ranking amongst: world's top 1-2% highly cited researchers (Stanford/Elsevier; ScholarGPS; AD Scientific Index; Clarivate), top 10 most-cited researchers for ICD (Front Oncol 2026), and world’s top scientists in 'Biology & Biochemistry' (Research.com) or 'Cell death' (ScholarGPS) sub-fields. He has been recognized by: SwissBridge Award (2026); OncoDaily's Yvonne Award "AI in Oncology" (2026); India-UK Achievers Honour (2026), AstraZeneca Foundation Award (2025), 41st Prix Galien Award (2023), KU Leuven Research Council Award (2016), ESP Young Investigator Award (2013), EMBO ST Fellowship (2013), FWO Postdoc Fellowship (2013-18), FWO-McKinsey & Company Scientific Prize (2012), & Commonwealth Shared Scholarship Scheme (2007-08), amongst others. He is inventor on 3 patent applications.