NRSA Fellowship (2013-Present)
Voltage-gated Ion Channels, Auxiliary Subunits, Biophysics, Animal Toxins.
My research is focused on cancer immunology, by investigating the function and regulation of phagocytes-mediated cancer immunosurveillance through combined immunological, biochemical and cell biological approaches. My studies aim to define the mechanisms utilized by cancer cells to evade the “immunity checks” mediated by phagocytes, and develop strategies to promote the clearance of cancer cells by the immune system. We believe this research will advance our knowledge of the basic principles of cancer development and metastasis, and may inspire a new class of therapeutics for cancer treatment.
Working on neuroinformatics of autism spectrum disorders using mouse models of ASD. I also have interest in developing bioinformatic tools, e.g., I developed a detailed lexicon of phenotypes tested in mouse models of human diseases, focusing on neuropsychiatric disorders, but applicable to most field of using mice, complete with definitions of complex neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and behavioral terms and definitions. Tools like this hope to allow the usage of standard nomenclature so that comparisons of evolutionarily conserved phenotypes between different models or model organisms from different laboratories becomes logistically possible.
Ishita Das is a part of the Mindspec annotation team working on the Animal Model module of SFARI Gene. Her work focuses on updating and curating mouse model data and configuration of the lexicon (PhenoBase) of animal model endophenotypes. Ishita joined Mindspec in 2012 soon after completing her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University where she worked on neuroanatomy and behavior of mouse models of Down syndrome(DS), testing a sonic hedgehog pathway based treatment regime that improves learning and memory as well as cerebellar dysmorphology in a DS model. She holds a M.S. in Biological sciences from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and a B.Sc (H) from Delhi University
My research interests are studying the integration of cellular metabolism into reproductive function as well as the molecular signaling pathways which cause defects leading to metabolic diseases and infertility.