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  • ट्रांसलेशनल हेल्थ साइंस एंड टेक्नोलॉजी इंस्टीट्यूट
  • TRANSLATIONAL HEALTH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE
    AN INSTITUTE OF BIOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH AND INNOVATION COUNCIL
    DEPT. OF BIOTECHNOLOGY, MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
    GOVT OF INDIA
  • होम
  • संकाय प्रोफ़ाइल

DR.RAJESH KUMAR

Ph.D

SCIENTIST

  • All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

Professional Training and Experiences:

Scientist, May 2014– Present

Research Scientist, Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), Faridabad, Haryana, India

Antibody engineering and Therapeutics

Currently my group is working on identification & characterization of monoclonal antibodies of an anti–SARS–CoV2 receptor-binding and their potential utility. In parallel my group is also investigating on evaluation of host-reactive immuno-determinants with humoral response in response to natural viremia (investigate antibodies contribution to effector functions such as ADCC or ADE).

Postdoctoral Research, 2013 April – 2014 May,All India Institute of Medical Sciences,New Delhi.

Identification of   neutralizing antibody epitopes on Indian and     South     African     HIV-1 subtype C virus for HIV

Ph. D.(Biochemistry), 2008 – 2013. All India Institute of  Medical Sciences,New Delhi.

Generation and characterization of Single Chain Variable Region (scFv) antibody fragments against envelope gp120 of HIV-1 Clade C

 

Research Activities

 My main area of research is in the field of “Antibody based therapeutics & diagnostic”for viral & non-viral targets.

 

FELLOWSHIPS/ACHIEVEMENTS/AWARDS

  • Awarded full fellowship to attendthe 2019 HIV & HBV Cure Forum on 20 & 21 July 2019 and the 10th IAS  Conference on HIV Science (IAS 2019), 20-24 July 2019 in Mexico City, Mexico.
  • Awarded young investigator award to attend the Research-for-Cure Academy which will be held at the Wits Rural Facility, Bushbuck Ridge, South Africa from 31 October to 2 November 2018
  • Recipient of  full scholarship to attend ‘HIV Research for Prevention(HIV R4P )2018 conference to be held at Madrid, Spain from October 21-25, 2018
  • Elected as fellow of Antiviral Research Society (AVRS) for the year 2018, based on the   outstanding research contribution in the field of viral vaccine.
  • MVP 2018 Award from IAVI,USA for  “excellent and outstanding leadership efforts towards successfully establishing the B cell sorting and bnAb isolation platform”at the HVTR lab in THSTI by closely working with NAC
  • Recipient of  full scholarship to attend ‘HIV Research for Prevention 2016: AIDS Vaccine, Microbicide and ARV-based Prevention Science (HIVR4P)’conference held at Chicago, USA, Oct., 2016
  • Awarded Best oral presentation award (second) in 3rd CME of Clinical Biochemistry in Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi, on 23rd March , 2014.
  • Awarded Joginder Singh Duggal Memorial Award for best oral presentation by Society of Young Scientists, AIIMS, New Delhi.
  • Awarded scholarship to attend the 27thInternational Conference on Antiviral Research at Raleigh Convention Center in Raleigh,North Carolina, USA, from 12-16 May 2014.
  • Awarded scholarship to attend the IAS Towards an HIV Cure Symposium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 29 & 30 June 2013, as well as the 7thIAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, 30June – 3 July 2013 (IAS 2013).
  • Awarded scholarship to attend the STI & AIDS World Congress 2013 (Joint Meeting of the 20th ISSTDR and 14th IUSTI Meeting), July 14-17, 2013, Vienna, Austria.
  • Recipient of Travel Award for ISHEID 12, Marseillie, FRANCE.
  • Recipient of Travel Award for ICAR 2012, Sapporo, JAPAN
  • Global Health Travel Award recipient for Keystone Symposia on “HIV Vaccines 2013” Colorado USA, from ICMR and NIH, Office of AIDS Research.
  • HIV SCIENCE-12, Chenni, India,awarded best poster graded II and a medal.
  • Qualified GATE 2008, exams All India rank, 463; percentile score, 96.48 conducted by Human Resource Development India (HRD) .
Publication
 
Publications as First & Corresponding Author
  1. Praveen Kumar, Reshma Perween, Tripti Shrivastava, Vanshika Singh, Hilal Ahmed Parray, Swarandeep Singh, Adarsh Chiranjivi, Ramachandran Thiruvengadam, Savita Singh, Naveen Yadav, Kamini Jakhar, Sudipta Sonar, Shailendra Mani, Sankar Bhattacharyya, Chandresh Sharma, Preeti Vishwakarma, Ritika Khatri, Anil Kumar Panchal, Supratik Das, Shubbir Ahmed, Sweety Samal, Pallavi Kshetrapal, Shinjini Bhatnagar, Kalpana Luthra, Rajesh Kumar*  Non-neutralizing SARS CoV-2 directed polyclonal antibodies demonstrate cross-reactivity with the HA glycans of influenza virus. International Immunopharmacology; 29 July 2021, [4.9](corresponding author)
  2. Hilal Ahmed Parray, Shivangi Shukla, Reshma Perween, Ritika Khatri, Tripti Shrivastava, Vanshika Singh, Praveen kumar, Shubbir Ahmed, Sweety Samal, Chandresh Sharma, Subrata Sinha, Kalpana Luthra, Rajesh Kumar* Inhalation monoclonal antibody therapy: a new way to treat and manage respiratory infections.  Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology Accepted 2021 [4.8]  (corresponding author)
  3. Reshma Perween, Shubbir Ahmed, Tripti Shrivastava, Hilal A Parray, Balwant Singh, Kamal S Pindari, Chandresh Sharma, Shivangi Shukla,, Subrata Sinha, Anil Kumar Panchal, Rajesh Kumar*. A rapid novel strategy for screening of antibody phage libraries for production, purification, and functional characterization of amber stop codons containing single-chain antibody fragments (scFvs). Biotechnology Progress, 2021 Feb 23;e3136.[2.6](corresponding author)
  4. Rajesh Kumar, Suprit Deshpande , Leigh M. Sewall , Gabriel Ozorowski , Christopher A. Cottrell , Wen-Hsin Lee , Lauren G. Holden , Sara T. Richey, Antra Singh Chandrawacar , Kanika Dhiman , Ashish , Vivek Kumar , Nitin Hingankar , K G Murugavel , A. K Srikrishnan , Devin Sok , Andrew B. Ward , Jayanta Bhattacharya. Potent neutralizing antibodies induced in rabbits by an engineered HIV-1 clade C Env derived from an elite neutralizer env sequence demonstrate distinct epitope specificities compared to those elicited in natural infection. Plos Pathogens 2021 [6.2]
  5. Hilal Ahmad Parray, Adarsh Kumar Chiranjivi, Shailendra Asthana, Naveen Yadav, Tripti Shrivastava, Shailendra Mani, Chandresh Sharma, Priti Vishwakarma, Supratik Das, Kamal Pindari, Subrata Sinha, Sweety Samal, Shubbir Ahmed,  Rajesh Kumar*  Identification of an anti-SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain directed human monoclonal antibody from a naïve semi-synthetic library. Journal of Biological Chemistry2020 Sep 4;295(36):12814-12821 [4.125] (corresponding author)
  6. Hilal Ahmed Parray , Shivangi Shukla , Sweety Samal , Tripti Shrivastava , Shubbir Ahmed , Chandresh Sharma , Rajesh Kumar*. Hybridoma technology a versatile method for isolation of monoclonal antibodies, its applicability across species, limitations, advancement and future perspectives. Int Immunopharmacol. 2020 Aug;85:106639. doi: 10.1016/j.intimp.2020.106639  [4.9] (corresponding author)
  7. Rajesh Kumar, *Tripti Shrivastava, Sweety Samal, Shubbir Ahmed,  Hilal Ahmad Parray. Antibody based therapeutic interventions, possible strategy to counter Chikungunya viral infection. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 2020 Apr;104(8):3209-3228. [4.8] (corresponding author)
  8. Rajesh Kumar*,Hilal Ahmed Parray, Subrata Sinha, Kalpana Luthra*.Phage display antibody libraries: A robust approach for generation of recombinant human monoclonal antibodies. International Journal of Biological Macromolecules 135 (2019) 907–918.[6.9](corresponding author)
  9. Rajesh Kumar,Huma Qureshi, Suprit Deshpande, Jayanta Bhattacharya. Broadly neutralizing antibodies in HIV-1       treatment and prevention. Therapeutic Advances in Vaccines and Immunotherapy2018 Oct 12;6(4):61-68   
  10. Rajesh Kumar, Ruchi Kumari , Lubina Khan, Anurag Sankhyan , Hilal Ahmad Parray  , Ashutosh Tiwari , Naveet Wig, Subrata Sinha , Kalpana Luthra. Isolation and characterization of cross neutralizing human anti-V3 single chain variable fragments (scFvs) against HIV-1 from an antigen preselected phage library. Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology 2019 Mar;187(3):1011-1027I.F [2.9]
  11. Rajesh Kumar, Gabriel Ozorowski ,Lauren G. Holden , Tripti Shrivastava, Vivek Kumar , Shilpa Patil , Anurag Sankhyan , Suprit Deshpande, Bimal K. Chakrabarti , Andrew B. Ward , Jayanta Bhattacharya. Characterization of a stable HIV-1 B/C recombinant, soluble, and trimeric envelope glycoprotein (Env) highly resistant to CD4-induced conformational changes.  Journal of    Biological Chemistry.2017  Sep 22;292(38):15849-15858I.F [5.1].
  12. Lubina Khan,, Rajesh Kumar¶,, Ramachandran Thiruvengadam, , Hilal Ahmad Parray , Muzamil Ashraf Makhdoomi , Sanjeev Kumar , Heena Aggarwal , Madhav Mohata , Abdul Wahid Hussain , Raksha Das , Raghavan Varadarajan , Jayanta Bhattacharya , Madhu Vajpayee , KG Murugavel , Suniti Solomon , Subrata Sinha and Kalpana Luthra. Cross-neutralizing anti-HIV-1 human single chain variable fragments(scFvs) against CD4 binding site and N332 glycan identified from a recombinant phage library (Co-First Author). Scientific Reports Feb  2017 Mar 23;7:45163 I.F [4.259]
  13. Deshpande, S., S. Patil, R. Kumar, T. Shrivastava, A. K. Srikrishnan, K. G. Murugavel, W. C. Koff, B. K. Chakrabarti, and J. Bhattacharya. 2016  “Association of mutations in V3/C3 domain with shift in evasion of HIV-1 clade C from follow up broadly neutralizing contemporaneous plasma antibodies in an elite neutralizer”      (Co-First Author) Retrovirology 2016, 13:41 I.F [3.867]
  14. Patil S¶,, Kumar R¶,, Deshpande S¶,, Samal S, Shrivastava T, Boliar S, Bansal M, Chaudhary NK, Srikrishnan AK, Murugavel KG, Solomon S, Simek M, Koff WC, Goyal R, Chakrabarti BK, Bhattacharya J. Conformational Epitope-Specific Broadly Neutralizing Plasma Antibodies Obtained from an HIV-1 Clade C-Infected Elite Neutralizer Mediate Autologous Virus Escape through Mutations in the V1 Loop  (Co-First Author) Journal of Virol. 2016 Jan 13;90(7):3446-57 I.F [4.69]
  15. Kumar R, Andrabi R, Tiwari A, Prakash SS, Wig N, Dutta D, Sankhyan A, Khan L, Sinha S, Luthra K. A novel strategy for efficient production of anti-V3 human scFvs against HIV-1 clade C. BMC Biotechnol. 2012Nov 15;12:87. I.F [2.415].

Co-Author Publications

  1. Efficiently cleaved HIV-1 envelopes: Can they be important for vaccine immunogen development?   Supratik Das, Rajesh Kumar, Shubbir Ahmed, Hilal Ahmad Parray, and Sweety Samal. Therapeutic Advances in Vaccines and Immunotherapy, August 2020
  2. Samal S, Shrivastava T, Sonkusre P, Rizvi ZA, Kumar R, Ahmed S, Bansal M, Chauhan K, Pokhrel S, Tambare P, Awasthi A.  Tetramerizing tGCN4 Domain Facilitates Production of Influenza A H1N1 M2e Higher Order Soluble Oligomers that Show Enhanced Immunogenicity In vivo. J Biol Chem. 2020
  3. Rajaiah Pergu, Sunayana Dagar, Harsh Kumar, Rajesh Kumar, Jayanta Bhattacharya and Sivaram V S Mylavarapu. The chaperone ERp29 is required for tunneling nanotube formation by stabilizing MSec. J Biol Chem. 2019 May 3;294(18):7177-7193.
  4. Sanjeev Kumar, Rajesh Kumar, Lubina Khan, Muzamil Ashraf Makhdoomi, Ramachandran Thiruvengadam, Madhav Mohata, Mudit Agarwal, Rakesh Lodha, Sushil Kumar Kabra, Subrata Sinha, Kalpana Luthra. CD4-binding site directed cross-neutralizing scFv monoclonals from HIV-1 subtype C infected Indian children.  Frontiers in Immunology, 2017  Nov 15;8:1568 
  5. Kumari N, Kumar R, Mishra V, Yadav S.Polyclonal Antibody Development Against Purified CC-NBS-LRR like Protein Fragment from Mature Lageneria siceraria Seeds and Immunolocalization.Protein J.2016 Oct 20.
  6. Deshpande, S*., Patil, S.*, Kumar, R., Hermanus, T., Murugavel, K.G., Solomon, S., Morris, L., Bhattacharya, J  (2016) HIV-1 clade C escapes broadly neutralizing autologous antibodies with N332 glycan specificity by distinct mechanisms. Retrovirology 2016 Aug 30;13(1):60.
  7. Bure D, Makhdoomi MA, Lodha R, Prakash SS, Kumar R, Parray HA, Singh R, Kabra SK, Luthra K.Mutations in the reverse transcriptase and protease genes of human immunodeficiency virus-1 from antiretroviral naïve and treated pediatric patients. Viruses. 201510;7(2):590-603. doi: 10.3390/v7020590.
  8. Raiees Andrabi, Muzamil Makhdoomi, Rajesh Kumar, Manju Bala, Ankita Kotnala, Velpandian Thirumurthy, Kalpana Luthra Highly efficient neutralization by plasma antibodies from human immunodeficiency virus type1 infected individuals on antiretroviral drug therapy. J Clin Immunol. 2014Mar 29
  9. Betsy Varughese, Rajesh Kumar, Padma Murthi, Kalpana Luthra, Neerja Bhatla, SN Dwivedi, Renu Dhingra. Effect of Circulating Angiogenic Factors on Trophoblast Cell Proliferation. IJIRSET 2013, Vol. 2, Issue 9, September 2013
  10. Andrabi, R., Kumar, R., Bala, M., Nair, A., Ss, P., Kushwaha, V., and Luthra, K. Envelope diversity, characteristics of V3 region and predicted co-receptor usage of human immunodeficiency viruses infecting north indians. J. Microbiol.2012, 50, 5, October  869–873.
  11. Andrabi R, Kumar R, Bala M, Nair A, Biswas A, Wig N, Kumar P, Pal R, Sinha S, Luthra K. Production and characterization of human anti-V3 monoclonal antibodies from the cells of HIV-1 infected Indian donors. Virol J. 2012Sep 12;9 (1):196. 23.
  12. Andrabi R, Bala M, Kumar R, Wig N, Hazarika A, Luthra K. Neutralization of tier-2 viruses and epitope profiling of plasma antibodies from human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infected donors from India. PLoS One. 2012;7 (8):e43704. Epub 2012 Aug 31.
  13. Prakash SS, Andrabi R, Kumar R, Lodha R, Kabra SK, Vajpayee M, Luthra K Antibodies that cross-neutralize the tier-2 pseudoviruses are produced in antiretroviral-naïve HIV-1-infected children from northern India. Arch Virol 2012.
  14. Prakash SS, Kalra R, Lodha R, Kabra SK, Luthra K. Diversity of HIV-1 envelope (V3-V5) sequence in HIV-1 infected Indian children. AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses. 2012 May;28(5):505-9
  15. Choudhary AK. Andrabi R, Prakash SS, Kalra R, Choudhury SD, Wig N, Bishwas A, Hazarika A, Luthra K. Neutralization potential of the plasma of HIV-1 infected Indian patients in the context of anti-V3 antibody content and ART. J Microbiol. 2012 Feb;50(1):149-54.
  16. Betsy Varughese, Rajesh Kumar, Neerja Bhatla, S.N Dwivedi, Manoj Dhingra, Renu Dhingra. Urinary placental growth factor: a promising marker for screening preeclampsia. IJSRP 2012; 2(11): 1-7.
  17. Prakash SS, Andrabi R, Kalra R Lodha R, Kabra SK, Vajpayee M, Luthra K. Binding antibody responses to the immunogenic regions of viral envelope in HIV-1 infected Indian children. Viral Immunol. 2011Dec;24(6):4639.
  18. Andrabi R, Choudhary AK, Bala M, Kalra R, Prakash SS, Pandey RM, Luthra K. Relative reactivity of HIV-1 polyclonal plasma antibodies directed to V3 and MPER regions suggests immunodominance of V3 over MPE R and dependence of high anti-V3 antibody titers on virus persistence. Arch Virol. 2011 Oct;156(10):1787-94.
  19. Shubhasree Dutta Choudhury, Alok K. Chaudhury, Rajesh Kalra, Raiees Andrabi, Naveet Wig, Ashutosh Biswas, Manju Bala, Kalpana Luthra. Antiretroviral drug resistance mutations in the reverse transcriptase gene of HIV - 1 isolates        from Northern Indian patients: a follow-up study. Arch Virol. 2010 Apr;155(4):563-9.1 isolates from Northern Indian patients: a follow-up study. Arch Virol. 2010 Apr;155(4):563-9.

 

Patents

 

   1.   Engineered Recombinant Protein Antigen of Trimeric Mimic of HIV-1 Envelope GLYCOPROTEIN SPIKE :  US provisional Patent application

         11 May 2016  Inventors: Jayanta Bhattacharya, Rajesh Kumar, Vivek K Yadav, Shilpa Patil

                2.       HIV-1 CLADE C ENVELOPE GLYCOPROTEINS: US provisional Patent application 62/189,418 filed on 7th July 2015

                        United States Patent Application .Inventors: Jayanta Bhattacharya, Suprit Deshpande, Shilpa Patil, Rajesh Kumar, Bimal K. Chakrabarti

               3.       ISOLATED NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCE USEFUL FOR THE PREVENTION OF HIV-1 INFECTION

                        India # 201611004727 (Indian Provisional Patent) Filed February 10, 2016

                        Inventors: Jayanta Bhattacharya, Suprit Deshpande, Shilpa Patil, Rajesh Kumar, Bimal K. Chakrabarti,

 

 

 

  • RAJESH[AT]THSTI[DOT]RES[DOT]IN