Research Domains at Maitra Lab

Oral Cancer

Oral submucous fibrosis (OSMF) is a nonreversible premalignant condition of the oral cavity that is highly prevalent in the Indian subcontinent.
We would like to extend our single-cell transcriptomic studies on OSCC to tumors that have arisen in the backdrop of OSMF, to obtain insight into the entire tumor ecology, by delineating unique cell states and gene expression programs as well as cell-cell interactions mediated by ligand-receptor communication.
These discoveries will also be taken forward into in vitro and ex vivo models to obtain deep insights into oral cancer pathogenesis and progression.
We expect these studies to provide novel information on OSCC and OSMF-associated OSCC which might be valuable for the development of improved diagnosis and treatment.

We would like to integrate the results obtained from multiple arms of our study to develop methods to predict the risk of preterm birth in women.
Such information can be used to triage women at risk of these birth outcomes so that appropriate clinical interventions can be used.
We would also like to take forward our findings into mechanistic investigations to gain deep insights into the biological processes that lead to healthy pregnancy and preterm birth, which might result in the development of novel intervention measures.
We expect these approaches will help in the reduction of preterm birth deliveries, resulting in the birth of healthy babies who later thrive in life.

In addition to participating in the Asian Immune Diversity Atlas (AIDA), we will pursue a study using the AIDA data set to understand the role of genomic variations in regulating cell-type-specific gene expression of immune cells in healthy Indian individuals.
Traditionally, expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) have been studied mostly using bulk tissue samples which are essentially pools of large numbers of multiple cells, that are substantially heterogeneous across and within various tissue types.
However, the average gene expression of the bulk population of cells taken as input for eQTL mapping limits the discovery of cell-specific eQTL signatures.
Further, this disregards the fact that, in addition to being tissue-specific, eQTLs might be cell-type and cell-state-specific.
Considering the requirement to understand the immune system of healthy individuals, our study will identify the major cell-type and cell state-specific cis and trans eQTLs of peripheral blood immune cells in healthy individuals.
We expect such information and further research downstream will help us to understand the diversity of the healthy immune system and use this information to elucidate its role in various infections.

Responding to the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, We have initiated genomic studies of SARS-CoV-2 in collaboration with many hospitals and research organizations from different regions in India.
We have played a lead role in various initiatives on genomics surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 during the pandemic.
In the post-COVID-19 era, we plan to expand genomic surveillance to other potential pathogen threats and host underpinnings of disease severity.