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Podcast with Dr. Sudipta Saha, PhD, Interview by Gail S. Thornton, PhDc, Narrator’s Voice: Gail S. Thornton, PhDc

12/31/2020

Interview with Dr. Sudipta Saha, Assistant Professor in Physiology at Amity University, Noida, India by Gail S. Thornton

Reporter: Gail S. Thornton, M.A.

Welcome to E-Voices, our podcast series exploring cutting-edge science and medical topics, sponsored by the Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence. I’m Gail Thornton, your host for this podcast.

Today’s guest is Dr. Sudipta Saha, Ph.D., who is an Assistant Professor in Physiology at Amity University in Noida, India, since 2017.

Dr. Saha completed his Ph.D. in Reproductive Biology from CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology in 2008 under the supervision of Dr. G.C. Majumder. He began his postdoctoral research in the same lab and later moved to Taiwan to work as a postdoctoral researcher at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital with Dr. Yu Cheng Pei and, subsequently, at Chang Gung University with Prof. Pin Ouyang. He later returned to India and was granted a Senior Research Associate Fellowship from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), working as a Scientists’ Pool Officer during 2015 through 2017 at the same Institute where he did his Ph.D.

During his first postdoctoral tenure in Taiwan with Dr. Yu Cheng Pei, he had the opportunity to visit and receive training at the lab of Dr. Sliman Bensmaia at University of Chicago in the United States. During his postdoctoral research in Taiwan, he was part of a team that made an instrument that can analyze visual and tactile motion integration in the somatosensory cortex of the brain. This research was published in the journal Sensors.

In his second postdoctoral tenure in Taiwan he worked on regulation of cell division. More specifically, his work was on localization of Cep55 and FLJ25439 proteins during cytokinesis. A part of the research was published in the journal Cell Cycle. Cep55 knockout mice also were developed in the same lab and maintained by him to find some interesting phenotypes.

During his Ph.D. research, he created a novel spectrophotometer-based instrument system to determine and analyze the vertical movement of spermatozoa, including vertical velocity. Vertical velocity is a better index of sperm health as it is recorded against the gravity. This research occurred with the help through an industrial collaboration, which then led to a patent granted in India and data published later in the journal of quantitative cell science, Cytometry Part A.

Additionally, Dr. Saha isolated a novel protein from goat blood that can enhance the sperm forward motility to a great extent and much more than any other known motility promoters like theophylline or bicarbonate. This protein also helped in maintaining sperm motility in room temperature for a long duration. The antibody of this protein also inhibited sperm-egg interaction. This research was published in Fertility and Sterility.

Both Dr. Saha’s Ph.D. research topics have potential use in fertility management and conservation of endangered species. The instrument design brought several awards, including two best poster awards, the India Innovation Pioneers Challenge Award from Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum and the Biotech Idea to Innovation Award from the British Council. Because of these recognitions, he received additional training at the lab of Dr. Uday Kishore in Brunel University, London, U.K.

For the past eight years, he has been an author, curator and reporter of numerous scientific articles for Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group, a pharmaceutical media venture with several cloud-based products. LPBI Group’s products include an open-access online scientific journal called PharmaceuticalIntelligence.com, a BioMed e-Series of 16 volumes in Medicine, real-time press coverage of biotech and medical conferences, and a podcast library of Interviews with key opinion leaders, all involving a team of experts, authors and writers in science and medicine.

Dr. Saha served as an Editor on several volumes in LPBI’s BioMed e-Series, namely on gene editing, genomics, cardiovascular disease and regenerative and translational medicine. He has published 14 journal articles, four book chapters and eight e-Books.

He is one of six authors of a recently published book (In Press), Microbial Pathogenesis: Infection and Immunity, by Springer Nature in New York. In this book, he co-authored a chapter on the COVID-19 pandemic with Dr. Uday Kishore. The title of the chapter is: SARS-CoV-2: Pathogenic mechanisms and host immune response.

Dr. Saha has received a research grant from Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, India, to work on the isolation and characterization of the receptor of the motility stimulating protein that he isolated during his Ph.D. research. Two Ph.D. students are working in his lab presently.

He is a reviewer of Plos One Journal and he is a life member of the Indian Science Congress Association and the Society of Biological Chemists in India.

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