The QBI Seminar Series is presenting Sanjeeva Srivastava, Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and a Visiting Professor at University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Srivastava obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in 2006, completed his post-doctoral studies at Harvard Medical School in 2009, and joined the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in 2009. He has established one of the best, state-of-the-art proteomics facilities in India, which is equipped with advanced mass spectrometers, microarrays & SPR set-up. His research on protein biomarkers of infectious diseases and brain tumors has resulted in 150 publications, 4 books, and over 20 patents filed, including Nature and Cell press publications. He has been awarded many national and international awards, including Young Scientist Footstep Awards Canada, Martha Piper Award for Communications Excellence, Apple Research Technology Support (ARTS) award UK, Young Scientist Award from Department of Atomic Energy & Department of Science Technology India, IIT Bombay’s Young Faculty Award and Prof. S. P. Sukhatme Excellence in Teaching Award. Dr. Srivastava is a fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, Royal Society of Chemistry and Royal Society of Medicine. He initiated the Cancer Moonshot India program to accelerate cancer proteogenomics research and India became part of International Cancer Proteogenome Consortium (ICPC). He is leading proteomics education and training programs in India and also serves on the Council of Human Proteome Organization (HUPO), executive committee member of Biology-Disease driven human proteome project (B/D-HPP) and emerged as a leader and catalyst of proteomics research and education globally.

Dr. Srivastava will provide an overview of mass spectrometry-based proteomics and label-free biosensors as well as latest targeted proteomics tools. He will focus on recent proteomics innovations and some of the major databases (BrainProtTM) and other contributions from his lab. Then, he will discuss the utility of these tools in context of their recent work on infectious diseases such as malaria and COVID-19.

Given the wider reach of testing, diagnosis of COVID-19 is no longer challenging; however, proper prognosis of the infection is still perplexing. Dr. Srivastava's lab employed FTIR and high-resolution MS-based proteomics analysis on swab and plasma in a cohort of over 200 COVID-19 patients to identify host peptides by employing simple extraction strategies. The differentially expressed peptides/proteins identified from the host correlated with the viral load of the host, which indicates that these proteins might be good prognostic biomarkers of severity prediction. Their study revealed that MS-based peptide tests can be used by the clinicians for diagnosis as well as identified pathways/ markers as the predictors of the disease progression. Additionally, they have worked on malaria, which is one of the most lethal infectious diseases, with 7 million infections annually. They employed a comprehensive proteomics analysis of falciparum and vivax parasite pellets and malaria infected human plasma samples, which helped us to identify the next generation biomarkers for malaria. Additionally, comprehensive host proteome analysis using machine learning based approaches helped in identification of altered host proteins capable of prognosing the disease. Further, they are developing assays for clinical translation of these findings, for efficient diagnosis and elimination of vivax malaria.

Talk Title: Recent innovations in Proteomics: Focus on Infectious diseases

Host: Arun Wiita