Associate Professor Suraj Parihar

Associate Professor Parihar is an immunologist with interest in host-pathogen interactions during infectious diseases, particularly tuberculosis and listeriosis. His research focuses on host-directed therapies as alternative and innovative strategies. He aims to identify and validate new drug targets against tuberculosis, using repurposed drugs and chemical activators/inhibitors, as well as by gene knockdown in human/mouse macrophages and gene-deficient murine models. He studies macrophage intrinsic killing functions against M. tuberculosis and L. monocytogenes for mechanistic insights since these pathogens manipulate host cell machinery to survive within cells. He aims to increase the fundamental knowledge of macrophage infection biology by combining experimental models and infected patient materials. For that, he combines diverse tools such as deep-CAGE transcriptomics, metabolomics, systems biology, flow cytometry and confocal microscopy. Suraj was awarded ICGEB, Claude Leon Foundation, CIDRI, and Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund-Japan funding during his post-doctoral tenure.