Start
Mar 31, 2016 - 17:00
End
Mar 31, 2016 - 18:00
Venue
Room 118 Department of Chemical Engineering
Event Type
Speaker
Narendra M. Dixit IISc Bangalore
Title
Systems approach to medicine: Rational optimization of hepatitis C treatment
Abstract: The traditional biomedical researcher’s toolkit which relies on a molecular description of health and disease often fails to address the healthcare challenges of our times. For instance despite the billions of dollars spent over the last 35 years and with the development of over 40 drugs HIV cannot be eradicated from an infected individual today. A systems approach drawn from the physical and engineering sciences can provide new insights leading to the resolution of many of these challenges. In this talk I will describe an example from our recent work where we have employed principles from chemical and biological engineering to resolve an outstanding question in medicine. The problem involves the infection of humans by the hepatitis C virus which current medicines cannot always cure. To understand why and when the medicines fail we examined the underlying processes that define the competition between the virus and our immune system. Intriguingly the resulting system of interactions behaves in a manner analogous to non-isothermal stirred tank reactors that are widely used in chemical engineering practice. Borrowing from the classical analysis of such reactors we unravelled not only the reasons for the failure of current medicines to treat hepatitis C but also a strategy to improve response rates.About the speaker: Narendra M. Dixit has a B Tech from IIT Bombay and an MS and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign all in Chemical Engineering. He did postdoctoral research in Theoretical Biology and Biophysics at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He then joined the Indian Institute of Science where he is currently Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and of the Centre for Biosystems Science and Engineering. His research interests are in the theoretical and computational biology of infectious diseases. He received the INSA Medal for Young Scientists in 2010 and is currently a Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Senior Fellow.