“Immunotoxins are chimeric proteins with a cytotoxic protein linked to a cell-targeting moiety such as a cytokine or monoclonal antibody. Immunotoxins offer means for selective targeting and elimination of cancer cells over-expressing specific cell surface receptors. After binding to target cells, these proteins are internalized by receptor -mediated endocytosis and cell death is induced by the toxin moiety.”

“I don’t consider myself qualified to say what the most important things are that have been discovered in the field of the Yeast genome and variations thereof. There are so many truly amazing discoveries that have been made or confirmed in yeast. However, it is clear that the recent changes to genomic technologies are enabling a rapid shift in the scale and types of experiments that are being undertaken. As such, I think that genomic scale studies will become much more common place and affordable over the next few years. These changes will mean that as biologists we have to adapt to a new way of designing and analyzing our experiments. As every generation repeats, the next few years will revolutionize the way we do science.”

“My current research interests include development of computer database on medicinal and aromatic plants of Jammu & Kashmir, Isolation & purification of proteins (enzymes and lectins) and screening of plants for their medicinal properties. The main emphasis is on understanding the etiology of esophageal cancer (EC) in Kashmir. The high incidence of the malignancy in the area and inadequate available literature to pin point the causative agents or processes warrant such type of research in the area. To achieve the goals I have been able to grab two research grants one from ICMR and another from World Cancer Research Fund.”

“Event though I am not a biotechnologist I would like to say that and I believe that the 21st century is the century of biotechnology or in a large perspective a century of life sciences. I would like to recommend the students to read the very famous futuristic work of Jermy Rifkin titled “The Biotech Century” and if you are a computer scientist then I would like to quote Donald Knuth who said that computer scientists have 500 years of work to do in biology.”

“Biological markers can impact all stages of cancer research, including screening and diagnosis, characterization of tumor subtypes, prognostic indicators, and markers of response or pharmacodynamic activity of drugs. Currently single feature biological markers are already in place in many cancer treatment paradigms. Thus, the use of biological markers is not a novel idea, although novel biomarkers are being routinely identified in the laboratory. The true impact of these markers however will depend on extensive validation, a field which has lagged behind. Essentially, the application of pharmacogenomics has improved our ability to identify potential biomarkers, but the number of these biomarkers being extensively validated is comparably low.”

“Our goal is to gain a more rigorous understanding of animal transcription networks. The BDTNP has developed methods to produce and quantitatively analyze data for transcription factors’ in vitro and in vivo DNA binding specificities, the expression patterns of factors and their target genes, and the accessibility of DNA in chromatin. Studying all of these components of the network together is, we believe, an essential step towards our eventual goal of deriving predictive computational models of animal transcription system wide.”

“Since we try to work at the edge of what is possible, our research can change rapidly in unexpected ways. At the moment, I see Next-Generation sequencing as being a source of vast new data sets, a major leap from microarray technology in both the information content and the complexity of analysis.”

“My research will most probably continue in the area of even earlier detection of cancer using DNA methylation markers. For colorectal cancer this means detecting the disease at a pre-cancerous stage known as an advanced adenoma. Detection of pre-cancerous disease will require improvements both in the tumor markers used and in the isolation and preparation of DNA from blood samples.”

“What I can say is that structural changes, and in particular CNVs, may indeed be responsible for a lot of sporadic disease given the fact that locus specific mutation rates for CNV mutations can be 100 to 10,000 times more frequent than locus specific mutation rates for single base pair changes or SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms). It may also be that the nervous system in particular is more susceptible to copy number changes than other biochemical pathways, or networks of interacting proteins in different physiological systems, within the body.”

“Larger studies and extensive clinical validation will help to identify miRNAs that have true diagnostic value. From our experience and published reports, microRNA profiles have appeared to be more useful in terms of their diagnostic value than messenger RNA profiles. The fact that miRNAs are stable in FFPE (formalin-fixed paraffin embedded) tissue samples opens up a wider array of available diagnostic specimens for such validations. Poor stability of messenger RNA in FFPE samples and the ability to amplify it has been an issue for doing such kinds of transcriptomic studies. Being able to go back to older archived tissues from patients with known clinical outcomes obviously allows you to do the kinds of studies that are needed to validate the diagnostic and predictive value of a particular profile. Recent advances in technology for detection of microRNA have pushed the ability to detect levels from even a single cell so even samples with limited material are possible to evaluate now.”