MANDRITA MUKHERJEE

Hello! I am Mandrita, a Prime Minster Research Fellow (Autumn 2021) at IIT Kharagpur, currently pursuing my doctoral studies in the School of Medical Science and Technology under the guidance of Dr. Nishant Chakravorty. My research primarily focuses on delving into various reactivation strategies of fetal hemoglobin to treat beta-thalassemia.  

Beta-thalassemia is a monogenic blood disorder characterized by reduced/absent synthesis of the β-globin chain of hemoglobin (HBB). Blood transfusion is the prime therapeutic choice due to lack of treatment choice and this often leads to iron overload and is associated with several complications. Till now, more than 200 different mutations have been identified in the beta-globin gene which can lead to beta-thalassemia. Hemoglobin consists of HbA, the major form of hemoglobin in postnatal life, HbA2, and HbF, which is the predominant form of Hb during fetal life and has a higher affinity to oxygen when compared to HbA. In fact, individuals possessing a rare condition known as Hereditary Persistence of Fetal Hb (HPFH) are known to lead a physiologically normal life even in the presence of an aberrant HBB gene. HbF levels are known to reach close to 100% in such cases thus mitigating the transfusion dependence. 

Thus, the augmentation of fetal hemoglobin has been valued highly as a therapeutic option for β-hemoglobinopathies like thalassemia and sickle cell disease. Therefore it becomes imperative for us to investigate the molecular mechanisms involved in fetal hemoglobin re-activation in subjects showing higher levels of post-natal HbF. Our group mainly focuses on how non-coding RNAs (miRNAs, circRNAs, and lncRNAs) play a major role in modulating various mechanistic pathways by which fetal hemoglobin could be regenerated in patients with beta-hemoglobinopathies.

1. Mukherjee, M., Rahaman, M., Ray, S.K. et al. Revisiting fetal hemoglobin inducers in beta-hemoglobinopathies: a review of natural products, conventional and combinatorial therapies. Mol Biol Rep (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-021-06977-8.

2. Motiur Rahaman, Jaikrishna Komanapalli, Mandrita Mukherjee, Prasanna Kumar Byram, Sunanda Sahoo, Nishant Chakravorty, Decrypting the role of predicted SARS-CoV-2 miRNAs in COVID-19 pathogenesis: A bioinformatics approach, Computers in Biology and Medicine, Volume 136, 2021, 104669, ISSN 0010-4825, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104669.

3. Rahaman, M., Mukherjee, M. & Chakravorty, N. Genetic Disorders, Genotyping Techniques and the Emerging Role of Tetra-ARMS-PCR as a Diagnostic Tool. Reson 26, 1229–1240 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-021-1225-x.

4. Rahaman M, Mukherjee M, Bhattacharya S, Mukherjee B, Shukla PC, Dolai TK, Chakravorty N. Exploring the crosstalk between long non-coding RNAs and microRNAs to unravel potential prognostic and therapeutic biomarkers in β-thalassemia. Mol Biol Rep. 2022 Jul;49(7):7057-7068. doi: 10.1007/s11033-022-07629-1. Epub 2022 Jun 18. PMID: 35717472. 

5. Motiur Rahaman, Chiranjib Bhowmick, Jaikrishna Komanapalli, Mandrita Mukherjee, Prasanna Kumar Byram, Praphulla Chandra Shukla, Tuphan Kanti Dolai, Nishant Chakravorty. Debunking the “junk”: Unraveling the role of lncRNA–miRNA–mRNA networks in fetal hemoglobin regulation. bioRxiv 2021.10.13.464339; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.10.13.464339 

6. Chiranjib Bhowmick. Motiur Rahaman. Shatarupa Bhattacharya. Mandrita Mukherjee. Nishant Chakravorty. Pranab Kumar Dutta. Manjunatha Mahadevappa. Identification of hub genes to determine drug-disease correlation in breast carcinomas. Med Oncol 41, 36 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12032-023-02246-9.

7. Prasanna Kumar Byram1, Mandrita Mukherjee1, Motiur Rahaman1, Hema Bora1, Manish Kaushal2, Santanu Dhara1 and Nishant Chakravorty. Bioactive self-assembling silk fibroin–sericin films for skin tissue engineering. Biomed. Mater. 19 (2024) 025009. DOI 10.1088/1748-605X/ad1c9d 

8. Payel Das, Arnab Hazra, Saradindu Saha, Sadhana Roy, Mandrita Mukherjee, Saugata Hazra, Hemanta K Majumdar, and Somdeb BoseDasgupta., “Resolving the polycistronic aftermath: Essential role of topoisomerase IA in preventing R-loops in Leishmania,” J. Biol. Chem., vol. 300, no. 4, p. 107162, 2024, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbc.2024.107162. 

1. Prime Minister Research Fellowship, 2021.

2. GATE 2017 (BT) qualified; AIR-64; Score-692

My CV