splashpuja07@gmail.com

Puja received her Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India in 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Akhil R. Chakravarty. During her Ph.D, she worked on the design and synthesis of metal-based complexes and studied their photocytotoxic activity for the application in photodynamic therapy (PDT). In June 2014, she joined as a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Patrick J. Sinko’s group at the Department of Pharmaceutics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA. There she worked on hydrogel-nanoparticle composite systems for drug delivery applications. Puja returned to India in 2015 and joined Dr. Shalini Gupta’s group at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at IIT Delhi in January 2016. During this period, she received prestigious National Post-Doctoral Fellowship (NPDF) by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) where she worked on removal of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) endotoxins from biological fluids. For this, she designed gold-coated magnetite core/shell nanoparticles (Fe₃O₄/Au NPs) engineered with self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of long acyl chain thiolates to hydrophobically entrap and remove endotoxin molecules. She also worked on reconstructing recombinant TLR4-LPS-MD2 complex in vitro in a single step and demonstrated the role of CD14 co-receptor as catalyst during the binding process. After her NPDF, she continued to work in the same group as a Senior Research Associate (SRA) awarded by CSIR in 2019. Under this tenure, she developed various nanobioconjugates and metal-based complexes for combatting antimicrobial resistance. Currently she is developing platform technologies for detection of cell-free DNA (cfDNA), virus like particles and bacterial infections in cancer.

References:

• Prasad P., Sachan S., Suman S., Swyambhu G. and Gupta S., ‘Regenerative core-shell nanoparticles probes for simultaneous removal and detection of endotoxins, Langmuir, 34, 7396–7403 (2018).
• Jagtap P., Prasad P., Pateria A., Deshmukh S. and Gupta S., ‘A single step in vitro bioassay mimicking TLR4-LPS pathway and the role of MD2 and CD14 coreceptors, Frontiers in Immunology, 11 (5), 1-9 (2020).
• Gupta A.*, Prasad P.*, Gupta S. and Sasmal P., ‘Simultaneous ultrasensitive detection and elimination of drug-resistant bacteria by cyclometalated iridium(III) complexes‘, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 12, 32, 35967–35976 (2020) (*Equal contribution).
• Prasad P.*, Singh R.*, Sritharan V. and Gupta S., ‘ε-Polylysine nanoconjugates: Value-added antimicrobials for drug resistant bacteria, ACS Applied Bio Materials, 3, 10, 6688-6696 (2020) (*Equal contribution).
• Prasad P. and Gupta S., ‘Nanobioconjugates: Weapons against antimicrobial resistance, ACS Applied Bio Materials, 3, 12, 8271-8285 (2020).