Mr. Jaydeep Sharma
Mr Jaydeep Sharma has been selected for the Sun Pharma Science Foundation Science Scholar Fellowship - 2025 for Young Scientists in the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences. His award-winning work was titled, “A muscle myosin regulating mammalian metabolic homeostasis”. This work focused on the contribution of the skeletal muscle to mammalian metabolic homeostasis. In this project, he identified that the loss of a sarcomeric myosin protein in a pre-clinical mouse model resulted in initial muscle hypertrophy, which was followed by severe atrophy, musculoskeletal defects and metabolic dysfunction characterized by type 2 diabetes. At the mechanistic level, he identified that the Nuclear Factor Erythroid 2-Related Factor 2 (NRF2) signalling, a key cellular pathway for maintaining redox homeostasis, was drastically downregulated in the skeletal muscle of these knockout mice. Reduced NRF2 signalling in the muscle resulted in increased oxidative stress, causing increased DNA damage and mitochondrial dysfunction, confirming that NRF2 signalling is associated with the observed muscle and metabolic defects. Sulforaphane is a small molecule that is a potent activator of NRF2 signalling, which, upon administration to the mouse model, led to increased levels of NRF2 and target genes in the knockouts. Most of the skeletal muscle and metabolic defects exhibited by the knockout mice, including elevated oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and insulin resistance, were rescued upon sulforaphane administration. Thus, this study confirms the potential of the NRF2 signalling pathway as a therapeutic target to treat muscle and metabolic defects associated with skeletal muscle dysfunction.
Mr. Tushar Ranjan Panda
Mr. Tushar Ranjan Panda has been selected for The Sun Pharma Science Foundation Science Scholar Fellowship 2025 for young scientists in the field of Pharmaceutical Sciences. His award-winning work was titled “A Paradigm Shift in Pt Chemotherapy: Unveiling Kinetically Inert Pt Agents.” Finding a strong corelation between the kinetic lability, anti-tumour effect and deficiencies of Pt drugs (resistance and toxic side-effects), his works endeavoured on rational designing of kinetically inert Pt complexes as a potential alternative to address the drawbacks of labile clinical Pt drugs. Through structure activity relationship (SAR) studies, he has been able to find out a lead inert Pt agent which remained substitutionally inert in presence of potential bio-nucleophiles including human plasma. The inert candidate was able to exhibit several fold better anti-tumour activity than cisplatin in vitro in a panel of different cell lines. Owing to its kinetic inertness, the candidate was able to overcome multi-factorial Pt resistance including GSH mediated resistance in resistant cell lines, both inherent and acquired resistant. When tested in vivo, the candidate was able to show comparable therapeutic efficacy as cisplatin in a Pt sensitive A549 xenograft mice model at a similar dose. In an inherently resistant SKOV3 ovarian orthotopic xenograft model, the candidate showed comparable efficacy as cisplatin but at a dose 2.5 times less than cisplatin elucidating the superiority of the inert candidate in resistant model. Bio-distribution studies revealed efficient clearance of the candidate from the body and hence was manifested in the form of ameliorating nephrotoxicity, the major dose limiting side effect of cisplatin. Mechanistic investigations revealed that the candidate target nuclear DNA, both duplex and quadraplex in a non-covalent manner. Additionally, multitargeted action of the candidate lead to mitochondrial damage and generated oxidative stress in cancer cells. Thus, it was concluded that the development of kinetically inert yet efficacious drug candidates is feasible which will offer the prospect of addressing the issues of drug resistance and toxic side effects like nephrotoxicity, at the same time retaining its anti-tumour activity.
Mr. Sourav Ghosh
Mr. Sourav Ghosh has been selected for the Sun Pharma Science Foundation Science Scholar Fellowship – 2025 for Young Scientists in the field of Biomedical Sciences. He was awarded for his research entitled, “Unraveling Cytosolic Immunity: Ubiquitin-Directed AAA-ATPase VCP/p97 in Host Antimicrobial Defense.” His work explores how human cells protect their cytosol against invading bacterial pathogens, focusing on the molecular mechanisms by which the ubiquitin system marks and directs intracellular bacteria for elimination. Sourav demonstrated that distinct ubiquitin chain types can influence bacterial fate and identified VCP/p97 as a key effector that recognizes and clears ubiquitin-tagged bacteria. By combining cell biology, biochemical assays, microscopy, and simulation approaches, his research highlights a previously unappreciated and newfound role of VCP/p97 in host antimicrobial defense and offers new perspectives for understanding cytosolic immunity, opening exciting therapeutic avenues for enhancing host defense against intracellular pathogens. This work was recently published in Nature Microbiology (2025).
Mr. Sreepadmanabh M
Mr. Sreepadmanabh M has been selected for the Sun Pharma Science Foundation Science Scholar Fellowship - 2025 for Young Scientists in the field of Biomedical Sciences. This award recognizes his pioneering contributions towards elucidating the physical microenvironment as an active regulator of living matter across biological scales. Whereas a traditional approach in biology has been to investigate phenomena from a cell-centric point of view, Sreepadmanabh’s work demonstrates how purely physical environmental properties potently influence living systems, independent of species identity or molecular pathways. By innovating 3D culture platforms that emulate habitats such as soil, mucus, and tissues, his groundbreaking research reveals how physical constraints regulate growth, motility, morphology, and cellular states, viz., demonstrating that 3D confinement acts as a potent selective pressure on bacterial communities; discovering a fundamentally unique mode of physical control over cell cycle progression in budding yeast; establishing how viscoelastic regimes govern transitions in worm motility; characterizing environmental cues which regulate the organization and plasticity of structurally-heterogeneous ovarian cancer spheroids; and identifying that the cellular state is an emergent property resulting from a unique regulatory axis between oxygen signalling and mechanical regimes. Together, Sreepadmanabh’s efforts advance a key interdisciplinary paradigm - that even incredibly complex biological systems can be dissected using engineered platforms and fundamental physical models, revealing unprecedented insights on the design principles of life.