BE Seminar on “Harnessing immune system for the development of bio-therapeutics” by Dr. Anjali Barnwal

Title: Harnessing immune system for the development of bio-therapeutics

Abstract: Leveraging the immune system for therapeutic advancement offers numerous advantages over standard treatments for inflammatory diseases. These advantages encompass precise targeting, enduring responses, minimal toxicity, and more. Diverse immunotherapies, such as antibody utilization, T-cell therapy, dendritic cell vaccination, among others, are actively under investigation. Given that vaccine strategies primarily operate via dendritic cell (DC) uptake and antigen presentation and recognizing the pivotal role of DCs in activating both innate and adaptive immunity, exploiting these attributes holds potential for developing effective therapeutics for inflammatory diseases like Cancer and COVID-19. These therapeutic modalities demonstrate enhanced antitumor efficacy across various tumor models. Furthermore, DC-based immunotherapy exhibits superior antiviral efficacy against Covid-19 compared to the commonly used free spike protein. While immunotherapies for inflammatory diseases are rapidly advancing in developed nations, India lags behind primarily due to cost and complexity barriers. Therefore, there is an unmet need for the development of cost-effective immunotherapeutic to enhance overall survival and quality of life for patients.

About the Speaker: Dr. Anjali Barnwal completed a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology from Patna University in 2013 and then obtained her master’s degree in biotechnology from the University of Hyderabad in 2015. After a year of dissertation work on the Dengue virus, her curiosity led her to delve into the development of therapeutics for Inflammatory disease. To pursue this interest further, she joined the Biomedical Engineering program at IIT Delhi for PhD in 2018. Throughout the doctoral research, she dedicated herself to developing immunotherapies for both COVID-19 and Cancer. Dr. Anjali’s PhD work resulted in many first-author publications in esteemed international journals. Notably, the cell-free vaccine developed for COVID-19 garnered attention in the Indian media for its superior efficacy. She was honored to receive the Amit Garg Memorial Research Award for the high-impact publication and the Dr. Sanjiv Bhatia Memorial Research Excellence Award for the best Ph.D. thesis (2023). During her PhD journey, she also took on the role of mentoring many master’s students and junior PhD candidates. As the first student in the lab, she played a pivotal role in its establishment, actively contributing to various aspects such as grant writing and management processes.

In July 2023, Dr. Anjali joined Duke University as a postdoctoral associate, where her research centers on understanding the intricate roles of various immune cells in the comprehensive response to immunotherapy. She is actively engaged in multiple projects aimed at enhancing antitumor efficacy and overall survival rates in murine Glioblastoma models.

In addition to her academic pursuits, she serves as a review editor at Frontiers in Immunology and Frontiers in Oncology, specializing in the Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy section. Driven by her passion for advancing immunotherapy in India, she was drawn to join Flahybase as a visiting scientist which is a pioneering startup company specializing in computational biomedicine for precision oncology. She is passionate about continuing to contribute to the development of immunotherapeutics in India, with the goal of making them as widely accessible as they are in developed countries.