• Cancer Bioinformatics
• Cancer Metabolomics
• Nanotechnology
• Mechanobiology

An aberrant activation of the biological process, termed epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays an important role for the acquisition of malignant phenotypes as well as cancer stem cells (CSC) properties by epithelial cancer cells. EMT facilitates the metastatic dissemination which is the major cause of cancer related mortality. The main focus of my work is to identify the molecular mechanisms that induces EMT, and to develop novel therapeutic strategies for preventing and treating metastasis.

1. Sphyris, N, King, C, Hoar, J, Werden, SJ, Vijay, GV, Miura, N et al.. Carcinoma cells that have undergone an epithelial-mesenchymal transition differentiate into endothelial cells and contribute to tumor growth. Oncotarget. 2021;12 (8):823-844. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.27940. PubMed PMID:33889304 PubMed Central PMC8057273.
2. Carrow, JK, Singh, KA, Jaiswal, MK, Ramirez, A, Lokhande, G, Yeh, AT et al.. Photothermal modulation of human stem cells using light-responsive 2D nanomaterials. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020;117 (24):13329-13338. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1914345117. PubMed PMID:32461372 PubMed Central PMC7306823.
3. Maity, AK, Lee, SC, Mallick, BK, Sarkar, TR. Bayesian structural equation modeling in multiple omics data with application to circadian genes. Bioinformatics. 2020;36 (13):3951-3958. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa286. PubMed PMID:32369552 PubMed Central PMC7332567.
4. Roy Sarkar, T, Maity, AK, Niu, Y, Mallick, BK. Multiple Omics Data Integration to Identify Long Noncoding RNA Responsible for Breast Cancer-Related Mortality. Cancer Inform. 2019;18 :1176935119871933. doi: 10.1177/1176935119871933. PubMed PMID:31488946 PubMed Central PMC6710679.
5. Pearson, SJ, Roy Sarkar, T, McQueen, CM, Elswood, J, Schmitt, EE, Wall, SW et al.. ATM-dependent activation of SIM2s regulates homologous recombination and epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Oncogene. 2019;38 (14):2611-2626. doi: 10.1038/s41388-018-0622-4. PubMed PMID:30531838 PubMed Central PMC6450754.
6. Bollong, MJ, Pietilä, M, Pearson, AD, Sarkar, TR, Ahmad, I, Soundararajan, R et al.. A vimentin binding small molecule leads to mitotic disruption in mesenchymal cancers. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017;114 (46):E9903-E9912. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1716009114. PubMed PMID:29087350 PubMed Central PMC5699095.
7. Mitra, S, Federico, L, Zhao, W, Dennison, J, Sarkar, TR, Zhang, F et al.. Rab25 acts as an oncogene in luminal B breast cancer and is causally associated with Snail driven EMT. Oncotarget. 2016;7 (26):40252-40265. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.9730. PubMed PMID:27259233 PubMed Central PMC5130006.
8. Sphyris, N, Sarkar, TR, Battula, VL, Andreeff, M, Mani, SA. GD2 and GD3 synthase: novel drug targets for cancer therapy. Mol Cell Oncol. ;2 (3):e975068. doi: 10.4161/23723556.2014.975068. PubMed PMID:27308452 PubMed Central PMC4905286.
9. Devaiah, SP, Owens, DK, Sibhatu, MB, Sarkar, TR, Strong, CL, Mallampalli, VK et al.. Identification, Recombinant Expression, and Biochemical Analysis of Putative Secondary Product Glucosyltransferases from Citrus paradisi. J Agric Food Chem. 2016;64 (9):1957-69. doi: 10.1021/acs.jafc.5b05430. PubMed PMID:26888166 .
10. Putluri, N, Maity, S, Kommagani, R, Kommangani, R, Creighton, CJ, Putluri, V et al.. Pathway-centric integrative analysis identifies RRM2 as a prognostic marker in breast cancer associated with poor survival and tamoxifen resistance. Neoplasia. 2014;16 (5):390-402. doi: 10.1016/j.neo.2014.05.007. PubMed PMID:25016594 PubMed Central PMC4198742.