I am an Assistant professor in the Department of Bioscience and Bioengineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur. The focus of my research lab is to understand the cellular and molecular events occuring in the tumor microenvironment and harness this knowledge to develop novel therapeutic strategies against solid tumor. By using modern genomic, proteomic, microfluidics, and computational methods, we are developing effective pharmacological and immunological therapeutic agents against solid tumors, including lung cancer.

Our previous research has shown that the fibroblasts present in the tumor microenvironment secret a chemokine protein known as Cxcl12, which acts on the endothelial cells of the blood vessel through its receptor Cxcr4. This interaction destabilizes the cell-to-cell contact and thereby making the blood vessels leaky. The leaky blood vessels allow intravasation of tumor cells into the blood and metastasis to other organse. We have also shown that a neuronal guidance protein Slit2, which is known to inhibit Cxcl12-induced effects, inhibits the growth and metastasis of breast and lung cancer by promoting the tumor killing property of macrophages.

Overall, our goal is to delineate the oncogenic signalingpathways regulating intricate interplay between tumor cells and host body's stromal/immune cells and develop therapeutic agents capable of breaking the tumor promoting interactions between the cancer cells and host cells.