Prof. Aravind Penmatsa
Prof. Aravind Penmatsa has been awarded the 2024 Sun Pharma Science Foundation Research Award for Pharmaceutical Sciences, for his research into understanding the mechanisms of chronic pain inhibitors and antiepileptic drugs that act through blockade of neurotransmitter transporters.
His research delves into studying substrate transport across biological membranes and is specifically focused on neurotransmitter uptake systems involved in noradrenaline and GABA reuptake from the synaptic cleft. This molecular machinery helps recycle released neurotransmitters and transport them back into neurons and glial cells through sodium-coupled symport. The ability of neurotransmitters like noradrenaline to prolong the activation of inhibitory adrenergic receptors in pain pathways allows noradrenaline reuptake blockers to be repurposed to serve as chronic pain inhibitors. His research group studied the interactions of commercially available blockers on noradrenaline uptake to facilitate insights into the specificity of these drug to noradrenaline transport. He has further delved into the mechanistic basis of how GABA reuptake inhibitors that can treat some forms of epilepsy, can interact with neurotransmitter transporters through an altered binding pocket configuration. His research has laid the structural basis of how two drug classes, pain relief inhibitors and antiepileptics, specifically interact with their respective neurotransmitter transporters.
Professor Dr C S Bal
Dr. Chandrasekhar Bal has been awarded the 2024 Sun Pharma Science Foundation Research Fellowship for Medical Sciences (Clinical Research) in recognition of his pioneering contributions to Therapeutic Nuclear Medicine. His groundbreaking work has revolutionized the treatment of thyroid cancer, particularly with his development of radioactive iodine 30 mCi 131I remnant ablation.
Dr. Bal joined AIIMS, Delhi, as a faculty member in 1991 and currently serves as the Dean of Examinations and Head of the Department of Nuclear Medicine. He is a prominent investigator in the field of therapeutic Nuclear Medicine and has led significant clinical research in India. His research includes the first human study of 225Ac-DOTATATE for treating metastatic Neuroendocrine Tumors. This pioneering work earned him consecutive honours from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, with the Dr. Henry Wagner Jr. Best Researcher of the Year award in 2021 and 2022 in the USA. His groundbreaking work, featured on the cover of a leading journal, also inspired Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) to initiate a phase III randomized clinical trial.
Dr. Bal has also contributed significantly to the management of metastatic Castration-resistant Prostate Cancer (mCRPC) using 177Lu-PSMA-617, a concept he developed well before the VISION Trial. For this, he received the European Nuclear Medicine Society’s “EANM Springer Prize Best Paper 2019.” His latest research focuses on 225Ac-PSMA-617, another major advancement from his group.
In a recent collaboration with the University of Mainz, Germany, Dr. Bal’s group is targeting the tumor microenvironment using Fibroblast Activation Protein Inhibitor (FAPI) as a multi-tumor target. Dr. Bal is also a co-inventor of the tris-based DOTAGA-Glu-FAPI Dimer, a theranostic vector for treating various cancers, including radioiodine-refractory thyroid cancer (RR-DTC), medullary thyroid cancer (MTC), triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), and sarcomas.
Dr. Bal is recognized as the first to conceptualize the need for specialists in theranostics—specifically, doctors with a DM in Therapeutic Nuclear Medicine. This initiative aims to meet the growing demand for therapeutic nuclear medicine, a rapidly expanding field projected to be worth $50 billion by 2030.
Dr. Sangita Mukhopadhyay
Dr. Sangita Mukhopadhyay has been awarded the 2024 Sun Pharma Science Foundation Research Fellowship for Medical Sciences (Basic Research) in recognition for her contributions to understand hostpathogen interactions in tuberculosis particularly the mechanisms by which Mycobacterium tuberculosis hijacks the protective host immune responses. Her research provided novel insights into the design of therapeutic immunomodulators and their potential therapeutic applications in improving human health particularly hyper-inflammation, immunosuppression, tuberculosis and cancer.
Dr. Mukhopadhyay's research has significantly enhanced our understanding of how certain virulent proteins of M. tuberculosis manipulate the host’s innate and adaptive immune responses, some of which are now being considered as potential drug targets. While M. tuberculosis employs some of these virulent proteins to suppress the host inflammatory immune responses for its survival, Dr. Mukhopadhyay demonstrated that these same properties could be leveraged to mitigate the extreme inflammation observed in conditions such as tissue injury, inflammatory bowel disease and cancer. For the first time, Dr. Mukhopadhyay identified a novel biologic PPE2 protein from M. tuberculosis and a synthetic PPE2-derived peptide that reduces mast cell population at the site of tissue-injury by targeting scf-transcription in fibroblasts. The selective suppression of mast cells using PPE2 protein/peptide offers broader and more effective therapeutic solution to excessive inflammation. This discovery presents promising therapeutic alternative to steroid-based anti-inflammatory treatments for managing inflammation/tissue injury and mast-cell centric disorders like wound healing, inflammatory bowel disease and cancer.