Parasitology & Infectious Diseases

Biography

Ananda M. Chakrabarty, Ph.D., is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago. While working at the Research & Development Center at General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, he was awarded the ‘Scientist of the Year’ award in 1975 by Industrial Research Organization of the United States.Dr. Chakrabarty has served as a consultant with the United Nations and was the founding member of a UNIDO Committee that proposed the establishment of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology (ICGEB) based in Trieste, Italy, New Delhi, India, and Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Chakrabarty has been a member of the Panel of Scientific Advisors, later called Council of Scientific Advisors, of ICGEB since its very inception.Dr. Chakrabarty has also been a member of the International Advisory Board of Chulabhorn Research Institute in Thailand, which is headed by the Princess Chulabhorn of Thailand, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) under the Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India. He has received many awards, including the Distinguished Scientist Award from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), MERIT Award from NIH, U.S. Army Distinguished Service Award, Pasteur Award, Inventor of the Year Award, American Chemical Society Public Affairs Award, Procter and Gamble Environmental Biotechnology Award, European Union Eurydice Award given in Brussels in 2007, among others. He served the U.S. Govt. as members of various NIH study sections, member of the Board on Biology of the U.S.He was also involved in international judicial working conversations, where he served as a Scientific Advisor for meetings in Hawaii and Ottawa, Canada, organized by the Supreme Court of Canada.He was awarded the civilian Padma Shri award by the Government of India in 2007.

Research Interest

Dr. Chakrabarty’s current research involves development of anticancer and anti-retroviral agents from microbial sources. As part of CDG Therapeutics Inc. (www.cdgti.com) , he has developed candidate anticancer drugs such as azurin that can act on both the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum and the AIDS virus HIV-1 to combat co-infection, as well as drug candidates that can be used for the potential treatment of many forms of cancer including brain tumors. A chemically-synthesized 28 amino acid peptide derived from azurin, termed p28, has shown very little toxicity in 15 advanced stage cancer patients but significant beneficial effect, including partial and complete regression of tumors that were refractory to conventional drugs, in phase I human clinical trials in Chicago.