Basu's research focus is on central nervous system diseases (CNS diseases) and he has studied the central nervous system with regard to how microglia and neural stem/progenitor cells affect the system.[5] The team led by him are involved in research on the pathogenesis of viruses such as Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), West Nile Virus (WNV) and Chandipura virus (CHPV) and how they cause neuronal damage in hosts.[6] In 2011, his group identified minocycline, a broad-spectrumtetracycline antibiotic generally used for treating skin infections, as having properties in fighting the disease of Japanese encephalitis, which they discovered through their experiments on mice.[7] The findings were put on clinical trial at the King George's Medical University where it was found to have beneficial effect on Japanese encephalitis and Acute encephalitis syndrome patients who survive the initial attack of the diseases and this has led to a wider study on the subject.[5] He was the guest editor for Clinical and Developmental Immunology journal when they released a special issue on Microglia in Development and Disease in 2013[2] and has mentored several research scholars in the post-graduate, doctoral and post-doctoral studies.[5]
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the prominent Indian science awards in 2010.[13] The National Academy of Sciences, India elected him as a fellow in 2011[14] and he received the VASVIK Industrial Research Award the same year.[15] He was chosen for the Rajib Goyal Prize of Kurukshetra University in 2012,[16] the same year as he became an elected fellow of the West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology, and a year later, he received the NASI-Reliance Industries Platinum Jubilee Award.[17] He was awarded the Sreenivasaya Memorial Award of Society of Biological Chemists (India) in 2017
[18] and two of the other major Indian science academies, the Indian National Science Academy[5] and the Indian Academy of Sciences elected him as their fellow in 2017 and 2018 respectively[19] He held the Tata Innvovation fellowship of the Department of Biotechnology in 2015 and the award orations delivered by him included the 2011 edition of the Dr. J. B. Srivastav Oration of the Indian Council of Medical Research,[20] the Senior Scientist Oration of the Indian Immunology Society in 2015[21] Prof. S. S. Katiyar Endowment Lecture of the Indian Science Congress Association in 2018.[5] In 2019, he has been elected to Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM). The AAM is the honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), the world's oldest and largest life science organization.
^"NASI Year Book 2015"(PDF). National Academy of Sciences, India. 25 January 2018. Archived from the original(PDF) on 6 August 2015. Retrieved 25 January 2018.
^"Vasvik Award". Vividhlaxi Audyogik Samshodhan Vikas Kendra. 27 January 2018. Archived from the original on 14 June 2021. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
