Pradipta Ghosh, MD
Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine
Director of Institute for Network Medicine
Executive Director, HUMANOID Center of Research Excellence (CoRE)
Seminar Information
Pradipta’s group has systematically pursued in-depth the biological implications of this intracellular heterotrimeric G-protein (trimeric-GTPases) system; her group is credited to have revealed how these are modulated by a novel family of guanine-nucleotide exchange modulators (GEMs) via a mechanism that is fundamentally distinct from the conventional trimeric-GTPase signaling from the cell surface by G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Her group was one of the original discoverers of the GEM signaling system beginning with the discovery of GIV-GEM, and subsequently extending to 3 other members such as NUCB1/2 and Daple-GEMs. Her work showed that GEMs serve as vital platforms for intracellular communication networks; they coordinate cellular responses and organellar function in cells responding to environmental signals initiated by diverse classes of receptors, thereby allowing non-GPCRs to engage with and modulate trimeric-GTPases. Using the powerful synergy of cell, molecular and structural-biology, molecular imaging, systems biology and bioinformatics, her group showed the crucial importance of the GEM system in coordinating diverse cellular processes and revealed the mechanistic basis of their GEM action. As a physician-scientist, she relentlessly pursued why/how aberrations in the GEM system spur diseases such as cancer progression, fibrosis and insulin resistance and provided impetus to develop drugs targeting the GEMs in disease states.
Pradipta is the Founding Director of the Institute for Network Medicine (iNetMed). In launching these institutes and the Centers within, Pradipta’s goal is to usher a new era of transdisciplinary and trans-scale network team science. While the Center for Precision Computational Systems (PreCSN) creates models for complex biological events that identify and rationalize high-value targets, the HUMANOID™ Center of Research Excellence (CoRE) specializes in reverse-engineering human organoid-based disease models for use in Phase ‘0’ human drug trials. Finally, insights into the eukaryotic cell’s communication system (i.e., signaling network) is being exploited to engineer smarter machines within the Consortium for Consortium for Cell-Inspired Systems Engineering (ConCISE). Pradipta’s overall vision is to drive disruptive research in biology, medicine and engineering using the fundamentals of the design principles of the eukaryotic cell’s intracellular signaling network, with the ultimate goal of enhancing, enriching and improving human existence.
Pradipta is a physician-scientist with dual training in internal medicine and basic/translational science. She leads a transdisciplinary portfolio of projects that span cellular and molecular biology, biochemistry, and enzymology, computation modeling and systems biology. There are two major areas of scientific interests, both unified by her passion to dissect and interrogate an eukaryotic cell’s signaling (communication) network.