Profile

Human body develops and runs on an intricate design of physical forces that includes extracellular matrix remodelling, hemodynamics, osmotic balance etc. Acute to chronic perturbations in the organ's homeostatic biomechanical properties invariably precipitate into pathologies such as cancers, cardio- and cerebro-vascular ailments, nephropathies, neurodegeneration, abnormal aging etc. Such imbalances also are evidenced as strong barriers to regenerative tissue mechanisms, haematopoiesis, angiogenesis and immune system functions.
Therefore, the major goal of the our lab is to understand 'how cells sense and respond to the pathological stresses, especially the mechanical microenvironment stresses such as the extracellular matrix rigidity, pressure over-load, glucose hyperosmotic stress, acidification, galectins' mediated tensional changes, fluid shear stress etc. Through these pursuits we wish to identify the pathology specific biomechanical signalling in cancers, neuro and cardio degenerative diseases and therapeutically attenuate or reverse these mechanisms, thereby promoting health and fitness.
The workflow involves examining the mechanical stressors at the cellular level by engaging physico-chemical assays and multi-omics analysis. The results obtained are escalated to the relevant animal models for validation and to the clinical samples for the examination of the translational relevance. The targeted deliverables from these pursuits include (i) the discovery of biomarkers and development of point-of-care tests for diagnosis and prognosis, (ii) mechanism based-discovery of dietary/natural product/Ayurveda-based multi-drug formulations for the management of chronic diseases and for enabling regenerative repair.
Overall, experimental and computational approaches in the research pursuits allow new hypotheses to be tested which are further progressed to clinical validation and translation by partnering with clinicians, biotech and pharmaceutical industries.