Lokesh Agrawal, Ph.D.

Health Scientist Administrator

Dr. Lokesh Agrawal is a Program Director at Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research Branch (BBRB) and directs and leads Biospecimen Research and Biobanking projects. Currently he leads an NCI Biospecimen Research program on "Integrating Biospecimen Science Approaches into Clinical Assay Development" and works on Cancer Moonshot Biobanking Project under the 21st century Cures Act that is collecting longitudinal biospecimens from ~1000 cancer patients. Dr. Agrawal has expertise in biomarker development, clinical laboratory science and regulatory experience to strengthen BBRB programs. He is actively involved in designing biomarker plans for NCI clinical trials in collaboration with Clinical Trials and Evaluation Program (CTEP) of NCI. He is also engaged in several trans-NCI programs on cancer technology development, low-cost technology global health programs and physical sciences and oncology. Before joining the NCI at NIH in 2012, Dr. Agrawal worked at AstraZeneca Inc., (Medimmune Inc.), where he was a team leader on various projects involving pre-clinical/clinical biomarker assay development/validation in oncology and managed several cross functional teams across to qualify and validate clinical biomarker assays. Some of these include circulating tumor (CTC’s), vaccine immunogenicity, B and T-cell proliferation & repertoire analysis. Prior to Medimmune he worked at Rapid Pharmaceuticals, Inc., as a Research Director in oncology, infectious diseases/vaccines biomarker and clinical end point assay development, qualification, and validation in collaboration with contract research organizations (CRO’s). Dr. Agrawal also led and directed several NIH-sponsored projects at Thomas Jefferson University and did his postdoctoral fellowship at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI). He earned his Ph.D. from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India and graduated from Delhi University. Dr. Agrawal has authored and co-authored several manuscripts in high impact journals and has given/presented his work at both national and international conferences. Dr. Agrawal main interests include biobanking, understanding the biospecimen science in a clinical setting and development and validation of human biospecimen integrity markers using proteomic and molecular approaches and novel biomarkers for cancer treatment and diagnosis.