Meenakshi Upreti,
Assistant Professor
Meenakshi pursued her doctoral dissertation in investigating mouse and human interferon regulatory factor-1 (IRF-1) at the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and demonstrated presence of considerable variation in the IRF-1 transactivation domain between mouse and human. These results raised fundamental concerns in translating findings across species, mice being considered a benchmark. This assessment was validated by instructors conducting the Gene Expression course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) which she attended in 2001 and later presented her work at the Eukaryotic Gene Expression meeting in 2003. At CSHL, she had a chance to meet stalwarts who emphasized the importance of extending basic molecular biological studies to clinical paradigms such as cancer. This inspired her to pursue her fellowship in understanding the molecular aspects of cancer. Her postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Univeresity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) was on understanding the role of apoptotic, Bcl-2 proteins and mechanism of action of microtubule inhibitors that are used in cancer therapy. In 2008, she was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship by the American Cancer Society, Illinois Division for her proposal on ‘Vinblastine Induced Modifications and Interactions of Bcl-2 Family Members’. Having come a full circle the goal of her research is now on transforming scientific approaches and techniques developed in the laboratory into clinical applications to reduce cancer incidence, morbidity, and mortality. Her current research at the Department of Radiation Oncology, UAMS falls broadly under the following areas (1) Experimental Cancer Therapeutics and Impact of Tumor Microenvironment (2) Developing Novel in-vitro/ in-vivo Tumor Models (3) Targeted drug delivery and (4) Application of Systems Biology approaches to Cancer.
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