NIBMG

Partha DasSupervisor: Kartiki V. Desai

Brief Description of Project

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers and the second most leading of cancer death in women. Breast cancer is hormone dependent tumor and estrogen is known to play a major role in the initiation and progression of this cancer. Endocrine therapy is the best therapy for breast cancer. But resistance to endocrine therapy is common. Previous studies account for only 40% of such mechanis
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ms. The aim of my research is to discover newer mechanism using genomics and epigenomics tools to identify novel candidates to combat endocrine resistance.
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Samadrita OjhaSupervisor: BHASWATI PANDIT

Brief Description of Project

Tuberculosis is a potentially serious infectious disease and still a major health problem worldwide. Pathogenesis of this disease is driven by a complex interaction between the host immune system and immune escaping strategies of the pathogen. Cytokines and chemokines produced by host immune cells play vital role in elimination of infection. Bio fluid level of one such chemokine, CXCL10,
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is found to be elevated in active TB patients. The effect of elevated CXCL10 on immune cells is not well studied. My aim of research is to explore the role of CXCL10 in alteration of downstream signaling pathways involved in host defense mechanism in context of TB using high throughput genomic tools. I am also interested to understand the influence of the chemokine in the immunological processes with advent of M.tb infection. These approaches will help us in better understanding of potential regulatory role of CXCL10 for tuberculosis disease progression.
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Samanwoy MukhopadhyaySupervisor: Saroj Kant Mohapatra

Brief Description of Project

Sepsis is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in all age groups, despite improved care in the recent years. In the pediatric group, sepsis accounts for a large fraction of mortality under 5 years of age, and is one of the leading causes of death in neonates. There is no specific drug for treatment, owing to incomplete understanding of the biology of this disease. I believe t
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hat genomics of sepsis is an exciting area of research. For example, recent findings hint at reprogramming of the leukocyte transcriptome in the patients; and this change is coordinated, reproducible and linked to the progression of the disease. I am performing whole-genome gene expression profiling in patients of sepsis to detect strong and reliable signature of outcome (e.g., survival versus death). Additionally, I am interested in discovering the genetic and epigenetic underpinnings of the transcriptional signatures.
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Seema BharatiyaSupervisor: Sreedhar Chinnaswamy

Brief Description of Project

Among the recently discovered Type–III interferon family, IFN-λ4 (IFNL4) is thenewest member. I am interested in characterizing the naturally occurring variants of IFNL4 gene for their effect on IFN-λ4’s function and their significance in different human diseases. IFNL4 gene transcription is known to generate several different splice variants. I am also interested to understand if any
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of the genetic variants within the body of IFNL4 are important in generation of these splice variants.
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Shamita SangaSupervisor: Moulinath Acharya

Brief Description of Project

Congenital muscular dystrophies (CMD) and congenital myopathies (CM) are a group of rare genetically and clinically heterogeneous degenerative primary muscle disorders with onset at birth or during infancy. Due to vast heterogeneity, clinical examination and protein-based analyses often fail to identify the genetic causes of these diseases making it challenging for the clinician to make an a
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ccurate diagnosis. My research therefore focuses on investigating the genomic signatures causal to CMD and CM in Indian patients. I analyse whole exome sequence data using variant calling and stringent variant filtration process to identify pathogenic mutations and achieve a genetic diagnosis.
I'm also interested in functionally characterizing the candidate variants in an in vivo zebrafish model and do a mechanistic evaluation in primary muscle cells using the efficient CRISPR-Cas genome editing tools.
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Shouvik ChakravartySupervisor: NIDHAN K. BISWAS

Brief Description of Project

Oral squamous cell carcinoma of the gingivo-buccal region (OSCC-GB) is a form of Head and Neck Squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Recent epidemiological studies reported – (i) India has one-third of all oral cancer cases in the world and (ii) oral cancer accounts for 30% of all cancers reported from India. Oral cancer is the topmost cancer among males in India and link
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ed to tobacco chewing and smoking habits. Few driver genes were recently identified for late-stage OSCC-GB from genome-scale studies. Identification of early stage OSCC-GB biomarkers is of extreme importance, because it might potentially lead to precise understanding of the molecular mechanisms of tumor initiation, as well as the factors whose alteration might lead to progression of tumor. My research objective is to leverage state-of-the-art genomic technologies for understanding the profile of the genomic drivers of early stage OSCC-GB tumors. Deeper understanding of the molecular underpinnings of the alterations of these drivers will provide improved diagnosis, more precise risk prediction as well as better response to therapy.
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Shrayashi BiswasSupervisor: SAMSIDDHI BHATTACHARJEE

Brief Description of Project

Genome wide association studies (GWAS) are used to discover association of genetic variants with various complex diseases and traits. However, testing markers across the genome in an unbiased manner leads to loss of power for such studies. My research project deals with increasing the power of such genome wide studies by incorporating information from other sources. Knowledge from pathways,
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gene expression/eQTL studies and transcriptional regulation can be integrated with the information from GWAS to help in identifying variants that could be otherwise missed in an unbiased genome-wise search. My work emphasizes on building a pipeline for integrative statistical analysis of such multi-omics data. The pipeline will enable investigators to discover novel genetic variants and understand their mode of action, thus helping to elucidate the underlying genetic makeup of complex diseases.
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Subhajit RoySupervisor: Sreedhar Chinnaswamy

Brief Description of Project

Viral diseases are outcomes of complex interactions between virus induced pathogenesis and host immune responses. Host immune responses are major contributors to pathogenesis in both viral diseases and inflammatory disorders. IFNλ-4 is comparatively a newer member of type III interferon family whose expression is genetically contolled. Its role in infectious and other inflammatory diseases
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is yet to be deciphered properly. My research focuses on understanding diseases in light of host IFNλ response, exploring genetic determinants of host and/or virus that are involved in manifestation of disease severity. I am also involved in defining new roles for IFNλ-4 at the genomic scale besides an interest to decipher its subcellular activity and its involvement in different cellular pathways; these approaches will provide complementary insights that will help a better understanding of the functioning of IFNλ-4 in human health and disease.
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Subhashis GhoshSupervisor: SANDEEP SINGH

Brief Description of Project

Human oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the eighth most common cancer worldwide; and, the most prevalent cancer among men and fourth most common among women in India. Owing to the highly heterogeneous nature of oral carcinoma at both cellular and molecular levels, it is important to investigate the functions of altered pathways with respect to distinct cancer cell-types present wit
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hin the tumor as well as in its microenvironment. In the context of cell-cell interactions, NOTCH related signaling is intriguing because of its juxtacrine mode of action. Therefore, I am interested in studying the functional consequences of altered NOTCH related genes and its regulation within oral tumors. My focus is to examine the mechanisms of reciprocal interactions between diverse cell-types and its significance in oral cancer initiation and progression.
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Sumitava RoySupervisor: ARINDAM MAITRA

Brief Description of Project

Intratumor heterogeneity is among the greatest challenges in treatment of cancer. In spite of disruptive advances in sequencing technologies achieved over the last decade, high resolution comprehension of such heterogeneity has been beyond our reach until recently. Developments in high-throughput Single Cell RNA-Seq (SC-RNASEQ) may now enable us to dissect the diverse cellular populations of
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tumors. In the future these technologies might inform the selection of targeted combination therapies and enrollment criteria for clinical trials. I am working on single cell RNA-Seq approaches to investigate the role of intratumour heterogeneity in tumour recurrence in Oral squamous cell carcinoma gingivo-buccal (OSCC-GB). My objective is to excavate the landscape of intratumor heterogeneity at single cell resolution and identify important clues on how cell type diversity relates to cancer recurrence.
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