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Dr. Anjali Jha

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Dr. Anjali Jha

Dr. Anjali Jha

Assistant Professor- Biophysical Chemistry

Overview

After completion of M.Sc. in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Dr. Jha joined Prof. G. Krishnamoorthy’s group at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai for Ph.D. Her thesis work was aimed at understanding the mechanism of aggregation of proteins into amyloid fibrils, a phenomenon which is responsible for diseases like Alzheimer and Parkinson. During her Ph.D., she developed and used a novel time-resolved fluorescence anisotropy-based method to map the structure of amyloid fibrils. This knowledge is important for the design of drugs for amyloid diseases. Her interest in structural biology and ultrafast fluorescence spectroscopy led to the collaborations with Prof. Jayant B. Udgaonkar at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore and Prof. Tahei Tahara at RIKEN, Japan. Following her Ph.D., she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Jennifer R. Cochran at Department of Bioengineering Stanford University, USA where she explored different methods to engineer proteins/peptides which could inhibit the growth of cancer cells. She also developed novel fusion proteins which could be used as molecular imaging agents for tumor progression and showed the feasibility of the method in mouse models. After her post-doc she joined Agharkar Research Institute, Pune as a DST-Inspire faculty/ scientist in nanobioscience group. Her interdisciplinary research interest led to productive collaborations with IISER and NCL, Pune. Together, she developed novel therapeutic agents like beta-breaker cyclic peptides, chitosan-PLGA based nanoparticles and ionic liquids as inhibitors for amyloid-beta protein aggregation to target Alzheimer’s disease. Her work has been published in various internationally reputed peer reviewed journals namely ACS Biochemistry, ACS Langmuir, ACS Biomacromolecules, Journal of Molecular biology, RSC Journal of Materials Chemistry, Biophysical Chemistry etc.
Qualifications
  • DST-Inspire faculty, Nanobioscience Group, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, India. 2014-2020
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, USA (Advisor: Prof. Jennifer R. Cochran) 2011 – 2012
  • Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India. Dissertation: Site-specific dynamics of proteins and protein fibrils revealed by time-domain fluorescence. (Advisor: Prof. G. Krishnamoorthy) 2005 – 2010
  • Master of Science (Organic Chemistry), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, India. Dissertation: Synthesis of substituted derivatives of naphthoquinone (Advisor: Prof. R. K. Peddinti), (CGPA: 8.9/10). 2003 – 2005
  • Bachelor of Science (Chemistry), University of Pune, India. First Class with Distinction. 2000 – 2003
Research: 7 years

Publications

  • Patni D, Patil AD, Kirmire MS, Jha A, Jha SK* (2024) DNA-Mediated Formation of Phase- Separated Coacervates of the Nucleic Acid-Binding Domain of TAR DNA-Binding Protein (TDP- 43) Prevents Its Amyloid-Like Misfolding. ACS Chemical Neuroscience 15:4105-4122. (Impact factor: 4.2)
  • Said MS, Navale GR, Yadav A, Khonde N, Shinde SS*, Jha A* (2020) Effect of tert-alcohol functional imidazolium salts on oligomerization and fibrillization of amyloid β (1-42) peptide. Biophys. Chem., 267:106480 (Impact factor: 2.5)
  • Jha A*, Ghormade V, Kolge H, Paknikar KM* (2019) Dual effect of chitosan-based nanoparticles on the inhibition of β-amyloid peptide aggregation and disintegration of the preformed fibrils. RSC J. Mater. Chem. B, 7: 3362- 3373 (Impact factor: 7.57)
  • Reja RM, Patel R, Kumar V, Jha A, Gopi HN* (2019) Divergent supramolecular gelation of backbone modified short hybrid δ-peptides. ACS Biomacromolecules, 20:1254-1262 (Impact factor: 6.97)
  • Jha A*, Kumar MG, Gopi HN*, Paknikar KM* (2018) Inhibition of β-amyloid aggregation through a designed β-hairpin peptide. Langmuir, 34: 1591-1600 (Impact factor: 4.33)
  • Jha A, Narayan S, Udgaonkar JB*, Krishnamoorthy G* (2012) Solvent-induced tuning of internal structure in a protein amyloid protofibril. Biophys. J., 103:797-806 (Impact factor: 3.8)
  • Jha A, Ishii K, Udgaonkar JB*, Tahara T*, Krishnamoorthy G* (2011) Exploration of the correlation between solvation dynamics and internal dynamics of a protein. Biochemistry, 50:397-408 (Impact factor: 3.3)
  • Jha A, Udgaonkar JB*, Krishnamoorthy G* (2009) Characterization of the heterogeneity and specificity of inter-polypeptide interactions in amyloid protofibrils by measurement of site-specific fluorescence anisotropy decay kinetics. J. Mol. Biol., 393:735-752 (Featured as the journal cover page article) (Impact factor: 5.5)
  • 8. Jha A, Udgaonkar JB*, Krishnamoorthy G* (2008) Towards elucidating the internal structure of protein fibrils: site-specific fluorescence anisotropy decay kinetics. Proceedings of 9th Trombay Symposium on Radiation and Photochemistry, 292:30-31 *Indicates Corresponding Author

Awards and Honors

  • 2018: Represented ARI, Pune at 4th Indian International Science Festival (IISF), Lucknow
  • 2014: DST-INSPIRE faculty award from Department of Science & Technology (DST), India
  • 2008: RIKEN fellowship for a three-month visit to the laboratory of Prof. Tahei Tahara at Molecular Spectroscopy Laboratory, RIKEN, Japan for collaborative Ph.D. project
  • 2005: Qualified National Eligibility Test for Lectureship and awarded Junior Research Fellowship (NET- JRF) by CSIR-UGC, India
  • 2005: Qualified Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), in Chemistry conducted by Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Science
  • 1998: Scholarship from AFGIS, Indian Air Force, for two years of higher secondary education

Projects

  • DST-Inspire Faculty, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive disorder that causes neuronal cells to degenerate. The presence of amyloid peptide fibrils deposits in the brain is the hallmark of the disease. The current therapeutics available for AD are known to mask the symptoms of the disease temporarily and do not treat the associated neurodegeneration. My research interest mainly lies in developing biocompatible therapeutic molecules specifically targeted towards the inhibition of the formation and disruption of amyloid fibrils to treat AD.
  • Postdoctoral project at Stanford University, USA: Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) regulates cell growth by activating a tyrosine kinase signaling cascade after binding to the c-Met receptor. Dysregulation and over-expression of the c-Met receptor correlates to poor prognosis in many human tumors, making it an attractive target for therapeutic intervention. In this work, we tested the ability of engineered HGF fragments (NK1) as antagonists to inhibit HGF-mediated Met activation. We tested activity of the engineered alexa680 fluorescent labelled NK1 mutant proteins against c-Met receptor in tumor model of nude mouse and imaged using an IVIS 200 system.
  • Ph.D. projects at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai: As a part of the thesis work, we developed and used time-resolved fluorescence methods to understand the residue-specific structure and dynamics of amyloid protofibril. The heterogeneity of the aggregated peptide sample and the specificity of inter-polypeptide interactions in amyloid protofibrils, have been probed by time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. We also studied the mechanism of amyloid polymorphism in more detail. It was revealed that the two different fibril forming segments of a protein form distinct internal structure of protofibril. The thesis work was done in collaboration with Prof. Jayant B. Udgaonkar at National Centre for Biological Sciences Bangalore, India.
  • As Visiting Research Scholar, at Advanced Science Institute, RIKEN, Japan with Prof. Tahei Tahara, we studied the coupling of protein dynamics and hydration shell. Briefly, in this study, measurements of fluorescence anisotropy decay kinetics was used to determine the motional dynamics of the fluorophore linked to several locations in a small protein. Fluorescence up-conversion and streak camera measurements were used to determine the solvation dynamics around the fluorophore. While the (internal) motional dynamics of the fluorophore was measured using time correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) setup coupled to picosecond pulsed Ti-sapphire laser. A strong positive correlation between these two dynamical modes was found in spite of the significant difference in their timescales.
  • During course work of Ph.D. at TIFR, a six months rotation project was carried out in Prof. Sudipta Maiti’s lab. The work was focused on understanding the mechanism of aggregation of amyloid-protein, which is the main cause of Alzheimer’s disease, using fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy.

Conferences, Workshops and Talks

1. Paper and poster presentation:
  • Represented Agharkar Research Institute, Pune in Mega Science Expo at 4th India International Science Festival (IISF) at Lucknow. 2018
  • Presented a poster in 42nd Annual Meeting of the Indian Biophysical Society Meeting at IISER, Pune. 2018
  • Presented research work at INSPIRE Faculty Monitoring-cum-Interaction Meet at KIIT University, Bhubaneswar. 2017
  • Presented a poster in Third International symposium on Protein Folding and Dynamics at NCBS, Bangalore. 2016
  • Presented a poster in International symposium on Peptide Engineering Meeting at IISER, Pune. 2015
  • Presented a poster in International Conference on Fluorescence in Biology at TIFR, Mumbai. 2009
  • Presented a poster in Trombay Symposium on Radiation and Photochemistry, organized by BRNS, DAE in collaboration with Indian Society for Radiation and Photochemical Sciences at YASHADA, Pune. 2008
  • Participated in the International Conference on Nuclear Aggregation and Growth at JNCASR, Bangalore. 2007
2. Talks Delivered
  • Agharkar Research Institute, Pune (30th June 2014)
  • CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune (24th April 2014)
  • Institute of Bioinformatics & Biotechnology (IBB), Savitribai Phule Pune University (28th Feb 2014)
  • Department of Hematology and Oncology, University of California, San Francisco, USA (27th Jan 2012)
  • Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, USA (8th May 2012)
  • Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California, San Francisco, USA (23rd Nov 2011)
  • Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, USA (7th March 2011)
  • Department of Chemistry, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA (25th Feb)
  • Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, USA (18th Feb 2011)
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