Saikat Mukhopadhyay — Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas

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Grant Information
Grant ID: R1220
Grant Mechanism: Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members
Recruited From: Genentech
Date Awarded: August 02, 2012
Grant Amount: $2,000,000

With the freedom to conduct basic scientific research, the applications aren’t

always immediately evident. But with that opportunity, sometimes there is the

reward of seeing applications to human health one couldn’t have imagined at the outset.

For Dr. Saikat Mukhopadhyay, the basic research draw was the hair-

like projections on the outside of most human cells, called cilia. By following his

curiosity, Dr. Mukhopadhyay discovered that they are involved in the development of a deadly childhood cancer as well as a type of kidney disease that affects young people. His research may pave the way for treatments that will eventually help children survive these diseases.

With the freedom to conduct basic scientific research, the applications aren’t

always immediately evident. But with that opportunity, sometimes there is the

reward of seeing applications to human health one couldn’t have imagined at the outset.

For Dr. Saikat Mukhopadhyay, the basic research draw was the hair-

like projections on the outside of most human cells, called cilia. By following his

Dr. Mukhopadhyay M.D., Ph.D., was recruited in 2013 to the department of

cell biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School with the help of a First-Time Tenure-Track Award from CPRIT. He was recruited from Genentech, where he was a postdoctoral fellow in proteomics and genomics.

Discovered in the 1700s, for centuries cilia were thought to be unimportant.

But now researchers understand that they function much like antennae, and are

intimately involved with sensing the environment around a cell and affecting a cell’s behavior.

A couple of years ago, Dr. Mukhopadhyay began studying a protein in cilia that occurs in neurons, or nerve cells in the brain. When he caused some mutations to the protein in young mice, to see how it would affect their brain development, he began seeing tumors developing in the mice’s brains. The tumors looked very similar to tumors that develop in young children, called medulloblastoma.

The Children’s Medical Center Dallas treats a child every month with this type of cancer, which can occur in very young children, and when Dr. Mukhopadhyay

compared the children’s tumors with the mouse tumors, he found many similarities. Medulloblastoma can be treated with chemotherapy, but patients sometimes develop resistance to the drug, in which case, the cancer can recur and be deadly.

Dr. Mukhopadhyay found that the cilia, and the protein he is studying, are

involved in the normal development of the brain, during which neurons develop,

proliferate, and then migrate. If one of those stages doesn’t progress properly,

tumors develop. He’s now trying to use what he has learned to design new

approaches to therapy, to try to prevent the recurrence of medulloblastoma when the current therapy fails.

Cilia are also implicated in the development of a kidney disease that hits

adolescents, called polycystic kidney disease. Dr. Mukhopadhyay is also working on finding a way to prevent further progression of this disease.

“We are really privileged to be in an institution where we get a lot of input from other groups,” Dr. Mukhopadhyay says, especially the kidney center and children’s hospital. He says information from patients informs their work in the lab, and his work with mice enables him to take information back to clinicians to try to help patients. “It’s like we are part of a much larger group.”

Dr. Mukhopadhyay is grateful for the initial support from CPRIT for allowing him the freedom to follow his curiosity. He has since received an $800,000 grant from Alex’s Lemonade Stand, named in memory of a girl who died at age nine from neuroblastoma after selling lemonade to raise money for research to combat the disease that took her life. He also received a $1.3 million award from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Mukhopadhyay studied at the Medical College in Calcutta, and received his M.D. from Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India. He received his Ph.D. in

biology from Brandeis University, and became a postdoctoral fellow at Genentech in 2008.

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Assistant Professor of Cell Biology W.W. Caruth, Jr. Scholar in Biomedical Research

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Saikat Mukhopadhyay, M.D., Ph.D.

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Profile

Biography

Grant Information