Dr Dipyaman Ganguly is an Indian physician-scientist who specialises in immunology and cell biology. He is currently a Principal Scientist and Swarnajayanti Fellow at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB), Kolkata. He is the director of the Dendritic Cell Laboratory at the IICB, also referred to as the Ganguly Lab, where he accommodates a number of researchers who study the pathophysiology of inflammatory illnesses and the control of innate immunity. For his contributions to the medical sciences, he was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology in 2022 by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the highest scientific research award given by the Government of India.
Given Bengal’s strong history in medical research, which dates back to individuals like Sambhunath Dey, who is renowned for his work on the cholera pathogen, Dr Ganguly hoped that this honour would encourage new doctors to pursue medical science research. He emphasised the need of sponsoring scientific efforts and fostering a supportive ecosystem.
The Director of CSIR-IICB Kolkata, Arun Bandyopadhyay, revealed that they had to turn a disused space in their Salt Lake facility into a cutting-edge research laboratory during the lockdown.
After earning his medical degree from Kolkata’s Medical College and Hospital in 2001, Ganguly moved to the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi as a clinical associate, concentrating on biomedical research. He began working as a research scholar at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology in 2003 and completed his first PhD in 2006. After relocating to the US, he continued his studies at the MD Anderson Cancer Center of the University of Texas and obtained a second PhD from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. After completing his post-doctoral studies as an SLE Foundation Fellow at the Columbia University Medical Center, he returned to India and joined IICB, where he is currently a Principal Scientist.
In addition, he was a Ramanujan Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology’s Science and Engineering Research Board before becoming a Swarnajayanti Fellow of the same department.
Deciphering the molecular regulation of the innate immune response, investigating the function of mechanical cues in immune cells, and investigating the involvement of dendritic cells in auto reactive inflammatory situations are the research interests of the Ganguly Lab. Recently, Ganguly Lab researchers found a novel regulatory module that is activated by mechanical signals and involves the Piezo1 mechanosensors in human T cells. Additionally, Ganguly Lab offered the first proof of plasmacytoid dendritic cells’ role in obesity and the related metabolic syndrome in people.
One of the most recent research projects on which the Ganguly Lab worked was when randomised control trials of plasma were being conducted on Covid-19 patients during the pandemic. The study was released in the Lancet. For his contribution to the biosciences in 2017–18, the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India granted him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest honours in Indian science. In addition, he has been awarded the Swarnajayanti fellowship by the Department of Science and Technology, the Merck Young Scientist Award, the CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute Award for Excellence in Drug Research, and the NAISI-Scopus Young Scientist Award by Elsevier.
Previous research by Dr Ganguly that was featured in Nature Reviews Key Advances in Medicine for 2012, led to the identification of the major source of nuclear antigens in systemic lupus, which is dying neutrophils, as well as the key initiation events in the pathogenesis of skin autoimmunity in psoriasis.
