Garima Khare

Biography

Ph.D. Department of Biochemistry, University of Delhi South Campus 2012 Subject: Biochemistry Title: Characterization of important drug targets for the identification of novel inhibitors against Mycobacterium tuberculosis M.Sc. Department of Biochemistry, Univ. of Delhi South Campus 2006 First Division/71% B.SC. Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi 2004 First Division/74.7%

Research Interest

My research interests primarily pertain to the identification of novel inhibitors against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, which can be developed into potent drugs against TB. Also, the research efforts are dedicated towards the understanding of host-pathogen interactions involved in TB pathogenesis. The work specifically is focused on the high throughput screening of various small molecule libraries against the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis by employing a rapid and robust strategy resazurin dye based cell screening assay. Subsequently, various assays are performed to check the drug likeness and selectivity index of the shortlisted compounds. Following this, all the hits are then evaluated for their ability to inhibit the intracellular survival of the pathogen which is performed by a fluorescence based method for screening of intraphagosomal growth of M.tuberculosis. Moreover, promising inhibitors are then evaluated in mice model of tuberculosis to check the efficacy of the compounds towards the treatment of the disease. Besides, my efforts are also invested into understanding of host-pathogen relationship and role of important mycobacterial genes in the pathogenesis and growth of the pathogen in the host by developing gene knockout mutants and correlating the loss of gene function with the establishment and progression of the disease and ability of the mutant pathogen to survive in the host. Another part of the work is focused on understanding the functional role of a very important acid induced transcriptional regulator of M. tuberculosis namely VirS. The bacterial responses to the host assault especially the acidic stress plays a crucial role in an early escape of the pathogen from the stressful conditions, however, these responses are poorly understood in the case of M.tuberculosis. VirS has been shown to be upregulated under acidic conditions suggesting that it might be involved in the acid induced responses and hence, the understanding of its function would provide useful insights into the hostpathogen interactions during such stressful conditions. Apart from this, I am keenly interested in the iron metabolism of M.tuberculosis and had earlier extensively characterized the iron storage proteins (BfrA and BfrB) biochemically and biophysically. Recently, by employing the gene knockouts of these bacterioferritins, I am interested to study the role of these proteins in the maintenance of iron homeostasis and delineated differential roles of these two proteins under different iron conditions.