Hem Chandra Jha PhD, FRSB
Associate Professor, Department of Biosciences and Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India; Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology; Ramanujan FellowDr. Hem Chandra Jha did his PhD in 2010 from Institute of Pathology in Delhi with Dr. Aruna Mittal, where he worked on Molecular Diagnosis and Pathogenesis of Chlamydia pneumonia in coronary artery disease patients and awarded PhD from BITS Pilani, Rajasthan. He then moved to University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia for postdoctoral research where he joined Prof. Erle S Robertson group working on tumor viruses specifically EBV (Epstein bar Virus) and KSHV (Kaposi sarcoma associated Herpesvirus).
He has been working on understanding the role of EBV latent antigens in transformation of B-cells by regulation of Aurora Kinase B and Histone H2AX. He also involved in the study of epigenetics changes with virus infection in primary cells.
Further, he moved to India at IIT Indore in July 2016 as Ramanujan Fellow. Subsequently join Assistant Professor in Feb 2017 and Head of the Department in Aug 2018. In Feb 2022, he promoted to Associate Professor. His current research work comprises of how EBV co-infection with Helicobacter pylori leads to aggressive gastric carcinoma and drug resistance. What are the biological mechanisms behind this co-infected patient’s higher mortality compared to other gastric cancer groups? Also, he is looking at how this EBV is playing role in several neural diseases like Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer’s diseases. How Gut-Brain axis is prevailing in presence of anti-biotic resistant pathogens.
He has published more than 120 research papers including PNAS, Plos Pathogens, mBio, Journal of Virology, etc, 13 book chapters and 3 patents. He is also a member of the Editorial and review board of several peer reviewed National and International journals. Recently his research group actively working in COVID-19 and downstream various organelles axis with variants of concern these domains.