Summary
Overview
Education
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

vi, MS

Summary

NAME: ROY, DIA POSITION TITLE: Post-Doctoral Researcher LERNER RESEARCH INSTITUTE, CLEVELAND CLINIC Post Doctoral 08/2021- Present Immunology A. Personal Statement Having completed my BS in Microbiology, I enrolled to pursue my Integrated MS-PhD program in Life Sciences. My courses, during the MS, encompassed all the arenas of Life sciences starting from Plant biology to human physiology. This enabled me to pervade a wide arena of biological sciences. I have always been interested in understanding the human body and the molecular mechanisms that facilitate a failure in the protection of the immune system so that we can harness the strength of this built-in resource to our advantage. It was during this time, that I joined, as a rotation MS student, my PhD—mentor Prof. Gaurisankar Sa’s lab in Bose Institute, India. His lab works on delineating the reasons, behind the development of innate or acquired resistance to immunotherapies which is the leading cause of failure of immunotherapy against cancer. This 5 years of Ph.D. journey was one of the beautiful discoveries that sparked my interest in tumor immunology. During Ph.D. tenure, my work focused on unraveling the multifarious role of T-regulatory cells (Treg) in causing tumor-associated immuno-suppression. These studies have led to multiple publications in journals European Journal of Immunology, Scientific Reports and Cancer Immunology Research, and in the process, I acquired a host of research skills. This was my early exposure to the world of malignancy and by the end of my Ph.D. tenure, I was in love with this rapidly evolving specialty. Working on T cells in the context of tumors always fascinated me about their immense role in shaping the tumor landscape and I strongly believe that work on immune checkpoints greatly accelerates the utility of Tumor immunotherapies at the translational level. I wanted to work further in this arena with particular interest in elucidating the role of immune checkpoints in controlling malignancy. At this juncture in the year 2021, I joined the laboratory of Dr. Lily Wang at the Lerner Research Institute in Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Wang’s mentorship, research environment, and dedication to training academic scientists were ideal for my post-doctoral training. For the last two and a half years, I worked on an exciting project of elucidating the novel crosstalk mechanism between two immune checkpoint molecules V-domain Immunoglobulin Suppressor of T cell Activation (VISTA) and leucine rich repeats and immunoglobulin-like domains 1 (LRIG1). We have recently established LRIG1 to be a novel inhibitory receptor that engages ligand VISTA and impairs T cell activation and persistence, also rendering the quiescence of T cells. This work has recently been accepted as a Research article in the journal Science Immunology. As a postdoctoral fellow at Dr. Wang’s Lab, who had numerous clinical collaborations, I have access to unique human samples undergoing CAR T therapy. This intrigued me to work on this exciting project that will eventually lead to the development of inhibitors targeting the LRIG1/VISTA axis improving CAR-T therapy. As such, this high-risk study will yield high rewards and a high translational impact. Aligned with this, I also look forward to networking internally as part of our cancer immunology groups and through regular attendance and presentation at national or international scientific meetings including SITC, AACR, or others. As I mentioned before, during my doctoral work, I was part of several research projects investigating mechanistic questions related to T cells, which gives me full confidence in my ability to lead this research project thereby fulfilling the goals of the fellowship. Since joining the Wang lab, I have used my past experience to work or troubleshoot many experiments thereby producing productive preliminary data for this project. Our work is also enthusiastically supported by the medical and oncology community, and we have formed a strong collaborative base with research groups from other faculty across multiple departments, who regularly contribute to research projects with scientific input and resources. I am confident that the combination of my expertise and the excellent scientific environment at Lerner Research Institute will ensure I accomplish the proposed work.

Overview

1
1
Certification

Education

Ph.D - Immunology

BOSE INSTITUTE, CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY
07.2022

Microbiology - Physics, Chemistry, Life Sciences, Cellular, &, Molecular Biology

08.2015

BS - undefined

BOSE INSTITUTE, CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY
07.2013

MM - undefined

ST. XAVIER’S COLLEGE, CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY

Accomplishments

  • GFI1/HDAC1-axis differentially regulates immunosuppressive CD73 in human tumor- associated FOXP3+, 1 (LRIG1) on CD4+/CD8+ T cells may associate with pathological characteristics of different types of cancer
  • In Regular and Young Investigator Award Abstracts A500–A500 (BMJ
  • Publishing Group Ltd, 2022)
  • Doi:10.1136/jitc-2022-SITC2022.0479
  • B.Positions, Scientific Appointments, and Honors
  • Position and Scientific Appointments Present Postdoctoral Fellowship, Department of Translational Hematology and
  • Oncology Research (THOR), Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic
  • Cleveland, OH, USA Present Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) member2021 Graduate Research Fellow (Ph.D
  • Candidate), Bose Institute, Calcutta
  • University, India
  • Academic and Professional Honors Received Award for best poster presentation by a Young Scientist in the 37th Annual
  • Convention of the Indian Association for Cancer Research on “From Cancer Biology to Precision Oncology: Challenges and Considerations” held at Bose Institute, Kolkata (2018)
  • Received the best poster award in the East Zonal Oncology Symposium at Saroj
  • Gupta Cancer Centre & Research Institute, Kolkata (2019)
  • Secured all India rank 44 in the Joint CSIR-UGC National Eligibility Test (NET) for
  • Junior Research Fellowships held on 22.06.2016
  • Received Junior and Senior
  • Research Fellowships from the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (2015-2020)
  • C
  • Contributions to Science
  • Graduate Research in Prof
  • Gaurisankar Sa’s Lab (07/2014-01/2015): I worked as a research intern in Prof
  • Sa’s Lab for 6 months
  • During this brief research tenure, I looked into the developmental plasticity between Treg (Regulatory T cells) and Th17 cells in the context of breast tumor microenvironment
  • Predoctoral research in Prof
  • Gaurisankar Sa’s Lab (01/2015-05/2020): I continued to work further on the research project from my graduate period
  • My work focused on unraveling the multifarious role of Th17 cells in the context of breast carcinoma and Rheumatoid Arthritis (R.A)
  • My primary work involved the characterization of Th17 populations at transcriptional and translational levels using q-PCR and multi-color flow cytometry techniques from peripheral blood of R.A and Breast carcinoma patients as well as from the tumor tissues of breast carcinoma patients
  • Analysis of Flow cytometry data obtained from patient samples using t-
  • SNE algorithm led to the identification of a particular immunosuppressive Th17 population in breast carcinoma patients, which deviates from their classical counterparts in terms of expression of certain immunosuppressive markers
  • Working further to get a detailed mechanistic understanding of this plasticity, we identified the transcription factor that seemed to be a possible candidate that could be used to manipulate the nature of Th17 cells
  • In this process, I gained expertise in cloning shRNA for silencing of the specific transcription factor
  • Further to elucidate the flexible and dynamic nature of chromatin at the transcription factor binding site of the promoter, we also went for checking the epigenome structure, DNA and histone modifications, and chromatin remodeling phenomenon which gave me hands-on expertise on several molecular biology techniques including Micrococcal nuclease-based nucleosome remodeling assay and Bisulphite sequencing assay for DNA methylation analysis
  • The work has been accepted as a research article in the journal “European Journal of Immunology” (2021, Feb,8)
  • As a senior research fellow, I have been also involved in managing laboratory resources, mentoring young researchers, and assisting my PI in writing grants and peer-reviewing articles for international journals
  • Post-Doctoral Research in Dr
  • Lily Wang’s Lab (07/2021-Present):
  • For the last two and a half years, in Dr
  • Wang’s Lab, I actively worked as one of the senior authors in an exciting project of finding a novel binding partner for the inhibitory checkpoint molecule VISTA
  • In this study, we established LRIG1 as a novel interacting partner for VISTA
  • LRIG1-VISTA interaction disrupts the T cell activation by having a broad impact on the proximal and distal TCR signaling pathways
  • This study also revealed the role of LRIG1 in driving the quiescence of tumor-specific CD8+T cells
  • This work, thus, successfully, threw light on the VISTA-LRIG1 crosstalk, which exerts inhibitory signaling and drives the quiescence of tumor-reactive T cells while reciprocally reducing the abundance of Tpex cells
  • I greatly enjoyed working on this project and it just got published in the journal Science
  • Immunology
  • However, we have just seen the tip of the iceberg and we are continuing to work to dissect further the impact of the VISTA-LRIG1 axis on T cell fate
  • I particularly want to look into the impact of these novel IC molecules in CAR T cells and hence want to invest my future training period on the CAR T project
  • D
  • Scholastic Performance
  • Year Course Title Grade, No additional Research funds have been allocated for this project.

Certification

2016-2017 Ph.D. Course Work (i) Basic Computer Application B (ii) Research Ethics & Safety A

Timeline

Ph.D - Immunology

BOSE INSTITUTE, CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY

Microbiology - Physics, Chemistry, Life Sciences, Cellular, &, Molecular Biology

BS - undefined

BOSE INSTITUTE, CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY

MM - undefined

ST. XAVIER’S COLLEGE, CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY
2016-2017 Ph.D. Course Work (i) Basic Computer Application B (ii) Research Ethics & Safety A

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