Extracellular Matrix in Disease and Tissue Engineering

Dr. Trayambak Basak is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Biosciences and Bioengineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi. His current work focuses on extracellular matrix biology, collagen post-translational modifications, and mass-spectrometry-based proteomics. His research aims to understand how enzymatic modifications of collagen regulate tissue structure, function, and regeneration in both physiological and cardiac fibrosis contexts. Dr. Basak received his doctoral training at the CSIR-IGIB in the biological sciences, with a focus on proteomics and disease biology, following completion of his master's at the University of Calcutta. His postdoctoral work extensively focused on the discovery of site-specific basement membrane collagen IV PTMs at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA. Over the course of his academic career, he has developed interdisciplinary expertise spanning biochemistry, quantitative proteomics, and systems-level analysis of protein modifications. His work integrates experimental approaches with computational and quantitative analyses to address complex biological questions in connective tissue biology and enzyme function. The major interests of his research group are three-fold: dissecting the key changes in cell-ECM interactions during cardiac fibrosis, gaining a mechanistic understanding of cardiac fibrosis, and discovering new biomarkers for heart failure progression.   A cell biologist by training, Dr. Nagaraj Balasubramanian graduated from the University of Mumbai (Bombay) with a bachelor's and master's degrees in Microbiology. He received his PhD in Biochemistry from the Cancer Research Institute (now ACTREC) at the Tata Memorial Center, Mumbai. Taking a break from adhesion and cancer biology, he studied mammalian phototransduction at the University of Miami, before returning to study cell adhesion, focusing on membrane trafficking in the lab of Dr. Martin Schwartz at the University of Virginia. Dr. Balasubramainan moved to IISER Pune to start his research lab. The research interests of his group include understanding how cell adhesion regulates endocytic (caveolae) and exocytic (Ral-exocyst) trafficking, and its implications for cell migration and anchorage dependence in 2D and 3D microenvironments. The lab also studies the impact of targeting AURKA-mediated regulation of Ral in targeting tumor growth in cancers. More recently, the lab has also explored the role of cell adhesion in regulating organelle function and the implications for anchorage-dependent and -independent signalling and growth.