Saumitra Das, born on 20 January 1962[2] in the Indian state of West Bengal, did his doctoral studies on the host-pathogen interactionofLeishmania donovani, an intracellular parasite which causes leishmaniasis, at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology which earned him a PhD from the University of Calcutta in 1992.[3] He continued his research on host-virus interactions during his post-doctoral days at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and after completion of the work, he joined the university in 1994 as an assistant research virologist. On his return to India in 1998, he joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) where he later became an associate professor[4] and serves as a professor at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology.[5] He also coordinates the functioning of the Centre of Excellence for Research on Hepatitis C virus, a research arm of the Department of Biotechnology housed in IISc campus.[6]
Das resides in the New Housing Colony of the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, Karnataka.[7]
The microbiological research of Saumitra Das covered the fields of molecular virology and molecular biology.[8] During his post-doctoral days at UCLA, Das identified I-RNA, a small RNA molecule isolated from the yeast species of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and demonstrated its antiviral activity against viruses that cause polio and hepatitis C.[3] Later, at IISc, he focused on the translation of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and has done in vivo and in vitro experiments on the characterization of La, a cellular trans-acting factor.[9] The team of scientists led by Das concentrates on the regulation of transcription and translation, especially hepatitis C virus and Coxsackievirus B3 RNA.[10] The research conducted by Das, along with Anjali Anoop Karande (his colleague from the biochemistry department of IISc) and their teams were successful in the development of a vaccine for hepatitis C; the vaccine, a mixture of virus-like particles, worked by enveloping the HCV proteins.[11] His studies have been documented by way of a number of articles[12][13][note 1] and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 111 of them.[14] He and his colleagues hold several patents for the processes they have developed.[15] He is also a member of the American Society of Virology and the American Society for Microbiology.[3]
Nath, Sayantan; Das, Sambuddha; Bhowmik, Aditi; Ghosh, Sankar Kumar; Choudhury, Yashmin (2019). "The GSTM1 and GSTT1 null genotypes increase the risk for Type 2 diabetes mellitus and the subsequent development of diabetic complications: A meta-analysis". Current Diabetes Reviews. 14 (1): 31–43. doi:10.2174/1573399814666171215120228. PMID29243583. S2CID23951314.
^"NASI Year Book 2015"(PDF). National Academy of Sciences, India. 17 December 2017. Archived from the original(PDF) on 6 August 2015. Retrieved 17 December 2017.
