Tapas Kumar Kundu (born 1962) is an Indian molecular biologist, academician and at present the Director of

Central Drug Research Institute The Central Drug Research Institute is a multidisciplinary research laboratory in Lucknow, India, employing scientific personnel from various areas of biomedical sciences. Prof. Tapas Kumar Kundu, a molecular biologist, academician and recip ...

, a prestigious research institute of

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (IAST: ''vaigyanik tathā audyogik anusandhāna pariṣada''), abbreviated as CSIR, was established by the Government of India in September 1942 as an autonomous body that has emerged as the l ...

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and divis ...

. He is the head of the Transcription and Disease Laboratory of

Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research The Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) is a multidisciplinary research institute located at Jakkur, Bangalore, India. It was established by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, to ...

. He is known for his studies on the regulation of

Gene expression Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, protein or non-coding RNA, and ultimately affect a phenotype, as the final effect. T ...

and his contributions in cancer diagnostics and the development of new drug candidates for cancer and AIDS therapeutics. He is an elected fellow of the

Indian Academy of Sciences The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Indian Physicist and Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman, and was registered as a society on 24 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it began with 65 founding fellows. The first general meet ...

Indian National Science Academy The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi for Indian scientists in all branches of science and technology. In August 2019, Dr. Chandrima Shaha was appointed as the president of Indian National Science Acade ...

and the National Academy of Sciences, India and a J. C. Bose National Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology. The

, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (SSB) is a science award in India given annually by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for notable and outstanding research, applied or fundamental, in biology, ...

, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2005, for his contributions to biological sciences. He is also a recipient of the

National Bioscience Award for Career Development The National Bio-science Award for Career Development or N-BIOS Prize is an Indian science award for recognizing excellence and promoting research in bio-sciences disciplines. It was instituted in 1999 by the Department of Biotechnology of the Go ...

of the

Department of Biotechnology The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. It ...

Biography

Born on 2 January 1962 at Hili, a border town near Balurghat in Dakshin Dinajpur district in the Indian state of

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fou ...

to Kalachand Kundu and Dipali couple, Tapas Kumar Kundu graduated in agriculture (BSc hons) from

Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya (BCKV), also known as Bidhan Chandra Agricultural University, is an agricultural university in West Bengal, India. The university aims to provide higher education in theoretical and technical fields of Agricu ...

in 1986 and completed his master's degree in biochemistry from University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore in 1989, winning a gold medal for standing first in the master's degree examination. He enrolled for doctoral studies at the

Indian Institute of Science The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a public, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, in the Indian state of Karnataka. The institute was ...

in 1990 and secured a PhD under the guidance of M. R. S. Rao in 1995 for his thesis, ''Zinc-Metalloprotein Nature of Rat Spermatidal Protein TP2 and its Interactions with DNA''. After a short stint at the

National Institute of Genetics The National Institute of Genetics ("Japanese Institute of Genetics") is a Japanese institution founded in 1949. It hosts the DNA Data Bank of Japan The DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) is a biological database that collects DNA sequences. It i ...

, Japan during 1995–96 as a visiting foreign research associate, he did his post-doctoral studies at the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...

during 1996–99. Returning to India the same year, he joined

at their Molecular Biology and Genetics Unit where he became an assistant professor in 2005 and heads the Transcription and Disease Laboratory of the institution in the capacity of a JNCASR Silver Jubillee Professor since 2015. Kundu is a life member and a former vice president of the Society of Biological Chemists, India and is its incumbent president. He is a nominated member of

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

and

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) is a learned society that was founded on December 26, 1906, at a meeting organized by John Jacob Abel ( Johns Hopkins University). The roots of the society were in the American Ph ...

and a member of the

American Society for Microbiology The American Society for Microbiology (ASM), originally the Society of American Bacteriologists, is a professional organization for scientists who study viruses, bacteria, fungi, algae, and protozoa as well as other aspects of microbiology. It wa ...

. He was among the biologists who founded the Chemical Biology Society, India of the

Indian Institute of Chemical Biology Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (IICB) is a biomedical research centre in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Established in 1935 as Indian Institute of Experimental Medicine (IIEM), it was inducted under the aegis of Council of Scientific & ...

in 2013 and serves as it secretary. An adjunct professor at the Special Centre for Molecular Medicine of

Jawaharlal Nehru University Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is a public major research university located in New Delhi, India. It was established in 1969 and named after Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister. The university is known for leading faculties an ...

, he served as a member of the Reader Panel of ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'' and is a former member of the editorial board of the

Journal of Biological Chemistry The ''Journal of Biological Chemistry'' (''JBC'') is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1905., jbc.org Since 1925, it is published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. It covers research i ...

(June 2011–September 2016). In 2019, the School of Biological Sciences,

Madurai Kamaraj University Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) is a public state university located in Madurai city, in southern Tamil Nadu, India, established in 1966. MKU is one of the 15 universities in India with the University with Potential for Excellence status, wh ...

had appointed him as a distinguished member of the national and international advisory committee to organize ICGB'19 (International Conference on Genome Biology 2019).

Legacy

Kundu's researches are principally focused on the regulation of transcription and

P53 p53, also known as Tumor protein P53, cellular tumor antigen p53 (UniProt name), or transformation-related protein 53 (TRP53) is a regulatory protein that is often mutated in human cancers. The p53 proteins (originally thought to be, and often s ...

function using

chromatin Chromatin is a complex of DNA and protein found in eukaryote, eukaryotic cells. The primary function is to package long DNA molecules into more compact, denser structures. This prevents the strands from becoming tangled and also plays important ...

and associated proteins as well as on the functional genomics of transcriptional co-activators. His researches assisted in the identification of PC4 and its role as a functional component of chromatin and as an activator of P53. He demonstrated the

histone In biology, histones are highly basic proteins abundant in lysine and arginine residues that are found in eukaryotic cell nuclei. They act as spools around which DNA winds to create structural units called nucleosomes. Nucleosomes in turn a ...

chaperone activity and the

acetylation : In organic chemistry, acetylation is an organic esterification reaction with acetic acid. It introduces an acetyl group into a chemical compound. Such compounds are termed ''acetate esters'' or simply '' acetates''. Deacetylation is the oppos ...

of chromatin transcription and these findings have been reported to have helped in identifying new drug candidates. Extending his researches to cancer and AIDS therapeutics, he has identified ''small molecule modulators of chromatin modifying enzymes'', a discovery which is reported to be helpful in developing new therapeutic protocols. Kundu has published one book, ''Epigenetics: Development and Disease'', and a number of articles in peer-reviewed journals and

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...

, an online article repository, has listed 215 of them. Several of his research findings have been put to commercial use by various companies and he holds several patents for his works which include processes and compounds. He has delivered a number of featured lectures and is one of the organizers of the ''Asian Forum for the Chromatin and Chromosome Biology'', a biennial event for the students and researchers of

epigenetics In biology, epigenetics is the study of stable phenotypic changes (known as ''marks'') that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix '' epi-'' ( "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are ...

and chromatin biology from Asian countries. He is also involved in popularizing science in the rural areas through science outreach programs and has delivered a series of lectures on ''Genes, Disease and Therapeutics'', with student community as the audience.

Awards and honors

The

(CSIR) awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2005 and he received the

(N-BIOS Prize) from the

, the same year. Three years later, he was selected for the National Academy of Sciences, India-

Reliance Industries Reliance Industries Limited is an Indian multinational conglomerate company, headquartered in Mumbai. It has diverse businesses including energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles. Relian ...

Platinum Jubilee Award in 2008 for his contributions to biological sciences. In 2011, he received the G. D. Birla Award for Scientific Research of the K. K. Birla Foundation and the Ranbaxy Research Award. He is also a recipient of the ''India Innovation Award 2012'' of Merck Millipore. Kundu, a recipient of the 1993 International Council of Scientific Union Award, is an elected member of the

Guha Research Conference Guha Research Conference (GRC) is a professional society set up by Indian scholars to develop the field of Biochemistry. It was established in 1960, and is named after Biresh Chandra Guha (1904-1962). The first four GRC meetings were held alongsid ...

and a fellow of the Union for International Cancer Control (2001 and 2005). He was elected as a fellow by the National Academy of Sciences, India in 2005 and he became an elected fellow of the

and the

in 2008 and 2009 respectively. The Department of Science and Technology awarded him the J. C. Bose National Fellowship in 2010 and he has delivered several award orations including the 2010 lecture of the Tohoku Medical Society, Japan. He is also a recipient of Monbukagakusho Scholarship of the Government of Japan (1996), Post-doctoral fellowship of the

Human Frontier Science Program } The International Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSPO) is a non-profit organization, based in Strasbourg, France, that funds basic research in life sciences. The organization implements the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) and ...

Biography

Legacy

Awards and honors

Selected bibliography

Books

Articles

Patents

See also

Notes

References

External links

Further reading