Padma Shastry's Biography

Padma Shastry, Scientist, National Centre for Cell Science

Dr. Padma Shastry is a senior scientist (Scientist G) in National Centre for Cell science (NCCS), Pune. She is PhD from Bombay University, India and did her post- doctoral studies at University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. She joined the Immunology department of CVTC, KEM hospital, Parel, Bombay in 1984 as a pool officer and continued as Senior Scientific Officer and worked in the area of Immunology of Acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. Since 1990, she is working at National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS earlier NFATCC). She has developed in vitro system using cell lines as alternatives to animals for assessing antibodies to tetanus. Her research interests are in cancer biology and currently the projects are focused on studying drug resistance/ sensitivity in gliomas using different experimental models, elucidating the signal transduction pathways in proliferation, survival and invasion in gliomas for identification of molecules for drug targets. Her group employs multidisciplinary approaches including different in-vitro experimental models, cell biology techniques in development of cell lines from tumors and knock down using siRNA and targeted antisense oligonucleotides to study the mechanisms of drug resistance and sensitivity in gliomas using monolayers (2D) and multicellular spheroids (MCS) cultured cells along with the role of inflammatory cytokines in microenvironment invasion of malignant glioma and signaling in tumor progression. Her research interests also include -stem cell biology and fungal lectins in cancer biology.