Arya Biragyn (Bira Arya)
Arya Biragyn (legal name: Bira Arya), Ph.D., is Tenured Senior Investigator, Chief of Immunoregulation section at the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, USA. He received M.Sci. (equivalent) in genetics from the Lomonosov University, Moscow, Russia, in 1983; and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Institute of Molecular Biology after Engelgadt, Academy of Sciences of Russia, Moscow, Russia, in 1991. He was employee of the Institute of Biology of Academy of Science of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (1983-1991); and Visiting-fellow at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Center of Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Szeged, Hungary (1985-1986). After postdoctoral fellowships at the Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana, IL (1991 1992) and at the National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD, USA (1992-1996), he worked as Scientist at the Science Application and International Corp., Frederick, MD (1996-2000) and Staff-scientist at the Lymphoma Development Program, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD, USA (2000-2003). In 2003, he became a Tenure-track Investigator and Head of Immunotherapeutics Unit, National Institute on Aging, Baltimore, MD, USA. He was tenured in 2011 as a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Immunoregulation section, Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Immunology, National Institute on Aging, Baltimore, MD.
He has authored 60 research papers published in peer-reviewed journals, including Science, Nature Biotechnology, Cancer Research, Blood, J. Immunology, and a number of review articles and patents. His research interest is to understand aging-associated immune impairments and immunotherapeutic strategies to alleviate diseases of the elderly. Highlights of his research: finding of a new regulatory B-cell subset, tBregs that facilitate cancer metastasis, and discovery of aging-associated pathogenic B cells that induce autoimmune CD8+ T cells in elderly. He has created a number of unique chemoattractant-based immunotherapeutic strategies for the modulation of immune responses via targeted delivery of tumor antigens, toxins and antisense oligonucleotides.