Dr Ashwani Kumar, Senior Principal Scientist of the Chandigarh-based Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), has been given the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for Biological Sciences for the year 2022. His substantial contributions to TB pathophysiology, particularly the part played by biofilm-induced infections, have earned him this honour.
In the presence of Dr Jitendra Singh, Dr N Kalaiselvi, Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), announced the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) awards for 2022. A valued scientific honour for noteworthy and excellent work in biology, chemistry, environmental science, and physics, among other fields, is the SSB Prize for Science and Technology.
Dr Kumar is an expert in infectious diseases and the intricate field of tuberculosis pathogenesis. His research centre is focused on elucidating the complex methods used by the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB), Mycobacterium, to display phenotypic treatment resistance.
Dr Kumar was born and raised in New Delhi and attended Delhi University for his undergraduate and graduate degrees. Under the guidance of Professors Vani Brahmachari and Mridula Bose, he completed his doctoral work before moving to the University of Alabama at Birmingham for his postdoctoral studies.
His research focuses on understanding the physiology of mycobacteria that live in biofilms and how they behave during non-replicating persistence. He explores the extracellular polysaccharides that are present in mycobacterial biofilms, illuminating their crucial contribution to the bacterium’s treatment resistance.
Dr Kumar is active in creating state-of-the-art instruments for assessing the metabolic and redox states of mycobacteria during infection, hence his research goes beyond theoretical comprehension. This strategy promises to reveal important details about how the bacterium behaves inside the host.
According to his laboratory’s theory, tuberculosis is a biofilm infection, necessitating multiple drug delivery for at least six months in order to treat it.
Dr Kumar also received a Swarnajayanti Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology for the academic year 2016–2017. Additionally, the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Senior Fellowship (2021–2026) was chosen for him. In 2022, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Sciences. He is regarded as one of India’s top researchers on tuberculosis, and his lab conducts some of the country’s top studies in this area.
The goal of Dr Kumar’s lab is to comprehend the processes by which Mycobacterium exhibits phenotypic drug resistance. He is working to understand the physiology of bacteria that are resident in biofilms and during non-replicating persistence in order to achieve this. More precisely, he wants to know how mycobacterial biofilms’ extracellular polysaccharides are made and how the SenX-RegX3 two-component system controls virulence and mycobacterial reproduction.
Tools for measuring the metabolic and redox state of the mycobacteria during infection are being developed by Dr Kumar and his team. Understanding the role of the lung microbiome in the pathogenesis of tuberculosis is another area of interest for the group.
The MDRIpred project, an open-source server for predicting inhibitors against drug-tolerant M.tb. H37Rv, has included Dr Kumar as a member. ResearchGate, an online database of scholarly literature, lists 31 of the works he has written. His research has shown that hosts, including humans, contain cellulose-encased biofilms. He also studies how signalling chemicals like carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide can control autophagy. He received the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science honours, from the Department of Biotechnology of the Indian Government in 2017–18 for his contributions to the biosciences.
