- Culture, Maintenance of various mammalian cell lines and airway basal stem cells
- Production and use of lentiviral vectors to do loss of/gain of function studies.
- Dissociation, sort, culture and maintenance of the airway and lung progenitor cells.
- Differentiation of the basal stem cells into airway epithelium using Air-Liquid interface culture for knockout and over expression
studies.
- Design and production of various plasmid constructs through molecular cloning (PCR cloning, gateway cloning), plasmid isolation
(mini-prep & maxi-prep), restriction enzyme digestion, ligation, transformation and gel electrophoresis
- Performed both transient and stable transfections using plasmids and lentiviral vectors on mammalian cells as well as basal stem
cells.
- Extraction of DNA/RNA from cells
- SDS-PAGE, Western blots for analysis of signaling pathways after the knockout or overexpression in air-liquid interface cultures.
- Medium-throughput Screening using multi-well plates In vivo Experience:
- Experience with both tamoxifen and tet inducible mice models
- Animal handling, managing mouse colonies, genotyping and dosing
- Tissue collection, processing, embedding and sectioning using cryostat.
- Immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence
- Optimized the tissue clearing method (ClearT2) for lung tissue to study regeneration after H1N1 influenza infection. Projects:
To define sox2 induced cellular plasticity mechanisms in lung tumorigenesis.
Sox2 is a lineage survival oncogene and has been shown to recurrently amplified in lung and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. However it is unclear how Sox2 regulates the initiation and progression of a normal cell to tumor cell transition. Our lab recently identified that differentiated cells of the lung could acquire stemness under extreme injury conditions. We hypothesize that such cellular plasticity mechanisms may contribute to Sox2 induced tumorigenesis. To test this hypothesis we developed a Sox2 gain of function model to conditionally express Sox2 in differentiated cells of the lung. In addition we have established human primary lung stem cell culture to model Sox2 induced tumorigenesis ex vivo. We transduced these primary lung stem cells using a Sox2 expressing lenti virus and transplanted these cells into immunodeficient mice. Furthermore, we performed co-immunoprecipitation (co-IP) and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analysis to determine the proteins that interacts with Sox2 and genomic loci that are bound by Sox2. Sox2 target genes were validated by ChIP-qPCR.
In addition, I have actively participated in other projects where we studied long distance migration of airway stem cells and their contribution to distal lung cells after H1N1 influenza infection. We have performed lineage-tracing studies to label and trace airway basal stem cells after H1N1 influenza infection. To test whether long distance migrated cells contributed to functional distal alveoli, we performed lung tissue clearing experiments. We used ClearT2 method to clear lung tissues for better optical visualization using 2-Photon confocal microscope. Currently we are performing ex vivo differentiation assays to test whether airway basal stem cells directly differentiate into alveolar cell types.
Research Trainee - Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Cambridge, MA February 2013 - July 2013
- Worked in biomedical engineering lab of Dr. Ali Khademhosseini as a Research Trainee in Microfluidics and Tissue engineering subgroup.
- Designed and tested a method for determining Cardiac Troponin I concentration in a microfluidic device in order to build a drug testing platform.
- Design and fabrication of microfluidic devices
- Dissociation and maintenance of primary cardiomyocytes in culture as well as culture in the microfluidic devices
- Execution of biochemical assays, i.e., ELISA (both direct and indirect) for detection of cardiac troponin for evaluation of cardiac
toxicity of the potential drug candidates.
Service Desk Student Staff – Special Group, Northeastern University Library
Boston, MA January 2013 – April 2014
- Duties included troubleshooting all the windows and mac software in the library computers as well as assisting students in their multimedia projects.
- Worked as a liaison between students and library management to enhance the student experience in the library.
- As a member of the special group, I also worked as supervisor for the rest of the student staff making sure of the attendance and
their work is up to par.
Education
Master of Science in Pharmacology – Northeastern University, Boston, MA (GPA – 3.39/4) May 2014
Course Work:
Stem cells and Regeneration, Cellular Physiology, Pharmaceutical Sciences Laboratory, Pharmacology I and II, Receptor Pharmacology, Behavioral Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Drug Design and Evaluation, Human Physiology and Pathophysiology, Concepts of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Writing in the Sciences, online course from Stanford University through Coursera– Passed with Distinction November 2012 Bachelor of Pharmacy – Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Science, India (GPA – 3.98/4) August 2011
Course Work:
Human Anatomy and Physiology, Pathophysiology, Biochemistry, Organic and Inorganic Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Microbiology, Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, Pharmacology, Clinical and Hospital Pharmacy.
Technical Expertise
Mammalian Cell Culture, Stem cell Culture and maintenance, Bacterial Cloning, ELISA, PCR, DNA/RNA isolation, Transfection, restriction enzyme digestion, Viral vector production transduction, Animal Handling, dosing and dissection, Cryostat, Immunohistochemistry, Plasmid preparation and isolation, Gel Electrophoresis, SDS-PAGE, Western blot, Fluorescence and Confocal Microscopy, Nano drop
Computer capabilities: Microsoft office suite (MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint), multimedia software like Adobe Photoshop, Image J, Graphpad prism.
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