Lopa Das Roy

Dr. Lopamudra Das Roy received her Doctoral Degree in Genetics in 2007 from Assam University, India. She has worked as a Lecturer in the Department of Genetics in Garden City College, Bangalore and has been associated with a research project “The Interrelationship between exogenous corticosteroids and mental retardation” in Delhi University, India. In 2007 Dr. Roy joined Dr Pinku Mukherjee’s laboratory at The Mayo Clinic in Arizona in the Department of Immunology as a Post doctoral fellow. She moved with Dr. Mukherjee to UNCC as a Post Doctoral Research Associate. She was a Research Assistant Professor at UNCC from October 2010 and currently works as a Research director at OncoTab Inc and as an Adjunct Associate Professor at UNCC. Her project was to “Study the influence of arthritis on breast cancer associated metastasis”. She studied the incidence and the immunological mechanisms of metastasis in the lungs and bones of mice with a) autoimmune arthritis that are induced to develop breast carcinomas, and b) spontaneous breast cancer that are induced to develop autoimmune arthritis. She has identified the key cytokines associated with the enhanced metastasis and is now finding ways to therapeutically target those. She has also recognized the role of mast cells and SCF/c-Kit signaling in breast cancer with arthritis and this work got press release in 2012. Her other project involved identifying the specific tyrosines(s) in the cytoplasmic tail of a tumor-associated protein, MUC1, that we believe is involved in the oncogenic function of MUC1 in pancreatic cancer cells. MUC1 is a transmembrane glycoprotein that is overexpressed and aberrantly glycosylated in most solid adenocarcinomas and is recently identified as an oncogene. Dr Das Roy’s interest and sole focus at OncoTab Inc is on expanding the capabilities to offer products and therapeutics from accurate cancer screening kits to targeted drug delivery systems for cancers that affect mankind.

Qualifications:

PhD: Department of Life science, Assam University, India. Topic: “Study the genotoxicity of some marketed pharmaceuticals in mammalian test system in vivo: Studies on drug-mutagen interaction”.

Post-doctoral fellow: Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale

EXPERIENCE

OncoTab Inc
November 2012 – present: Research Director
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
October 2014 – present: Adjunct Associate Professor
November 2012 – September 2014: Adjunct Assistant Professor
October 2010 – October 2012: Research Assistant Professor
September 2008 – September 2010: Post-Doctoral Research Associate

Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale.
September 2007 – August 2008: Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Immunology
Garden City College, Bangalore, India
2003-2005 – Lecturer, Department of Genetics
Delhi University, Delhi, India
2001-2002 – Research Scholar, Hormone Research Lab

Honors and Awards

Press Releases:

Websites:

• Certificate of Excellency in All India Talent Search Examination, 1993
• Awarded with First Class 2nd Position (2nd Highest score in the University) in the Bachelor’s and masters Degree program from Assam, India, 1998 and 2000
• Pre-doctoral Scholarship from the Central Government of India, 2004-07
• Awarded with postdoctoral grant on behalf of the Fiscal year 2008(FY08) Department of Defense (DOD) Breast cancer research program (BCRP). Title of the proposal: “Evaluate the Mechanism of Enhanced Metastasis Induced by Arthritis”. Proposal rated Outstanding with a score of 1.3. Role: Principal investigator, 2009-2012
• Awarded with postdoctoral grant from Susan Komen Foundation but declined since I was awarded with DOD postdoctoral grant in the same year, 2009
• Highly accessed articles in Breast Cancer Research, BMC, and BMC Women’s health: [Breast Cancer Research, 11:4/R56, 2009-present]. [Breast Cancer Research, 15:R32 doi:10.1186/bcr3412, 2013-present]. [BMC Cancer 2011, 11:365, August 2011-present]. [BMC Cancer 2014, 14:225, March 2014-present].
• Judge for the fifth annual graduate student poster competition in the Charlotte Biotechnology conference, 2011
• Review committee: International Member of review committee for graduate students from Assam University, India, 2011-present
• Millenial Magazine Spring/Summer 2011, Page 12, Title: “Inspiring Discovery”. Article published on my work on breast and pancreatic cancer, 2011
• Guest/Invited speaker for Conferences in USA, China, Canada and India, 2009-2014
• “Arthritis augments breast cancer metastasis: role of mast cells and SCF/c-Kit signaling”, Identified as Newsworthy for the AACR Annual Meeting 2012, held in Chicago. The work was reported through a wide range of consumer media outlets (newspapers, magazines, radio and television), trade publications, and social media platforms and press conference, 2012
• Wikipedia on MUC1 protein (2014) referenced the manuscript under reference#30: Das Roy, L., Sahraei, M., Subramani, D., Besmer, D., Nath, S., Tinder, T., Kandavel, S., Lee, Y., Hwang, SL., Gendler, S., and Mukherjee, P. MUC1 enhances invasiveness of pancreatic cancer cells by inducing epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Oncogene nature publication, doi 10.1038/onc.2010.526.
Link to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUC1

Expert Speaker on Cancer at “Global Cancer Summit Conference”, November 2015 at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

Chairperson at “Global Cancer Summit Conference”, November 2015 at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Judge of Poster sessions at “Global Cancer Summit Conference”, November 2015 at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Research grants awarded
Source: Department of Defense Breast cancer research Program: BCRP BC087792 Postdoctoral Award
Title: Evaluate the mechanism of enhanced metastasis induced by arthritis.
Role: Principal investigator
Start date: 09/01/2009
End date: 08/31/12

Source: Department of Defense cancer research Program
Title: A novel association and therapeutic targeting of neuropilin-1 and MUC1 in Pancreatic Cancer
Title: Role: CO-Principal Investigator
Start date: 09/01/2012
End date: 08/31/2014

Scientific Reviewer for Grants and Proposals

DOD – US Department of Defense Breast cancer research Program ( BCRP )

2015 BCRP Clinical Trial-Preclinical Research-2- Scientist Reviewer
2014 BCRP Immunology-2- Scientist Reviewer

Scientific reviewer for Journals

Cancer Biomarkers
PLoS ONE
BMC Cancer
Journal of Translational Medicine
International Journal of Biomedical Science
Immunopharmacology and immunotoxicology
Cancer Medicine

Publications
1. Das Roy, L., Mazumder, M., and Giri, S. (2008). Effects of low dose radiation and vitamin C treatment on chloroquine induced genotoxicity in mice. Environ. Mol. Mutagenesis. 49:488- 495. .
2. Das Roy, L., and Giri, S. (2007). Genotoxicity of ciprofloxacin in mammalian test system. Journal of Pediatric Oncall. 70:39-40. (National Indian Journal).
3. Das Roy, L., Pathangey, B.L., Tinder, L.T., and Mukherjee, P. (2008). Breast cancer associated metastasis is significantly increased in a model of autoimmune arthritis. Available online: http://precedings.nature.com/documents/2632/version/1.
4. Das Roy, L., Pathangey, B.L., Tinder, L.T., Schettini, L.J., Gruber, H.E., and Mukherjee, P. (2009). Breast cancer associated metastasis is significantly increased in mice with autoimmune arthritis. Breast Cancer Research. 11:56.
5. Das Roy, L., Sahraei, M., Subramani, D., Besmer, D., Nath, S., Tinder, T., Kandavel, S., Lee, Y., Hwang, SL., Gendler, S., and Mukherjee, P. (2011). MUC1 enhances invasiveness of pancreatic cancer cells by inducing epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Oncogene nature publication, doi 10.1038/onc.2010.526.
6. Das Roy, L., Pathangey, B.L., Tinder, L.T., Schettini, L.J., Gruber, H.E., and Mukherjee, P. (2011). Collagen induced arthritis increases secondary metastasis in MMTV-PyV MT mouse model of mammary cancer. BMC Cancer, 11:365.
7. Besmer M, L., Curry, J., Das Roy, L., Tinder, T., Schettini, J., Hwang, S., Lee, Y., Gendler, S.J., and Mukherjee, P. (2011).Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma mice lacking mucin 1 have a profound defect in tumor growth and metastasis. Cancer Res. 2011 Jul 1;71(13):4432-42.
8. Sahraei, M., Das Roy, L., Curry, J., Tinder, L.T.,Nath, S., Besmer, D., Kidiyoor, A., Dalia, R., Gendler, S., and Mukherjee, P. (2011). MUC1 plays a crucial role in the oncogenic signaling pathways of human pancreatic cancer cells. Oncogene nature publication, doi 10.1038/onc.2011.651.
9. Schettini, J., Kidiyoor, A., Besmer, D., Tinder, T., Das Roy, L., Lustgarten, J., Gendler, S and Mukherjee, P.(2012). Intratumoral Delivery of CpG-Conjugated Anti-MUC1 Antibody Enhances NK Cell Anti-Tumor Activity. In press. Cancer Immunology Immunotherapy, DOI: 10.1007/s00262-012-1264-y.
10. Chauhan, V., Nelson, D., Das Roy, L., Mukherjee, P and Kenneth, B. (2012) Exacerbated metastatic disease in a mouse mammary tumor model following latent gamma herpes virus infection. Infectious Agents and Cancer, 7(1):11.
11. Das Roy, L., Giri, S., Singh, S., and Giri, A. (2013). Effects of radiation and vitamin C treatment on metronidazole genotoxicity in mice. Mutat Res. doi:pii: S1383-5718(13)00029-6. 10.1016/j.mrgentox.2013.02.001.
12. Nath,S., Daneshvar,K., Das Roy, L., Kidiyoor, A., Sahraei, M and Mukherjee, P. (2013) MUC1 induces drug resistance in pancreatic cancer cells via activation of PI3K/Akt pathway and upregulation of multidrug resistance genes. Oncogenesis (2013) 2, e51; doi:10.1038/oncsis.2013.16.
13. Das Roy, L., Curry, J., Sahraei, M., Kidiyoor, A., Besmer, D., Gruber, H.E and Mukherjee, P. (2013). Arthritis augments breast cancer metastasis: Role of mast cells and SCF/c-Kit signaling. Breast Cancer Research, 15:R32 doi:10.1186/bcr3412.
14. Hastie, E*., Besmer, D*., Shah, N., Murphy, A., Moerdyk-Schauwecker, M., Molestina, C., Das Roy, L., Curry, J., Mukherjee, P., and Grdzelishvili, VZ. (2013). Oncolytic vesicular stomatitis virus in an immunocompetent model of pancreatic cancer. Journal of Virology, doi:10.1128/JVI.01412-13
15. Singh, S., Das Roy, L., and Giri S. (2013). Curcumin Protects Metronidazole and X-ray Induced Cytotoxicity and Oxidative Stress in Male Germ Cells in Mice. Prague Med Rep, 114(2):92-102.
16. Kidiyoor,A., Schettini, J*., Besmer, D*., Rego, S., Nath, S., Curry, J., Das Roy, L., Dreau D., and Mukherjee, P. (2014) Pancreatic Cancer Cells Isolated from Muc1-Null Tumors Favor the Generation of a Mature Less Suppressive MDSC Population. Cancer Immunology Immunotherapy, doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2014.00067.
17. Das Roy, L, Sahraei, M., Gruber, H.E., Besmer, D and Mukherjee, P. (2014). Systemic neutralization of IL-17A significantly reduces breast cancer associated metastasis in arthritic mice by reducing CXCL12/SDF-1 expression in the metastatic niches. BMC Cancer, doi: 10.1186/1471-2407-14-225
18. Curry, J*., Besmer, D*., Das Roy, L., Grover, P., Nath, S., Rao, S., Mukherjee,P. (2014). Combinational MUC1 vaccine therapy and Indomethacin treatment reduces breast tumor burden via a COX-independent pathway. Manuscript in preparation, Breast Cancer Research.
19. Nath, S., Das Roy, L., Grover, P., Rao, S., and Mukherjee, P. (2014) MUC1 regulates Cox-2 gene in pancreatic cancer. Manuscript accepted with minor revisions in Journal Pancreas.

20. Zhou,R., Curry,J., Das Roy,L., Grover, P., Moore,L., Wu,S., Kamesh, A., Leung,T., Mukherjee, P. (2015). A Novel Association and Therapeutic Targeting of Neuropilin-1 in MUC1^high Pancreatic Cancer. In press. Oncogene.

21. Das Roy, L.,Dhillon, L., Zhou., R., Moore., L, Puri., R., Livasy, C., Mukherjee., P. (2016) A monoclonal antibody with exceptional specificity across major breast cancer subtypes. Manuscript to be submitted to Clinical Cancer Research.

22. Moore, L., Das Roy, L., Wu, S., Puri, R., Mukherjee,P and Dréau,D.. (2016) Early detection of mammary tumors in vivo using a highly specific tumor antibody. Manuscript in preparation.

Scientific presentations
1. Das Roy, L., and Giri, S. (2007). Induction of Chromosomal Abnormality, Micronucleus and Sperm Shape Abnormality by Metronidazole: A Commonly Used Pharmaceutical. Oral Presentation: International conference on Biomarkers in health and Environmental Management & Environmental Mutagen Society of India: XXX11 Annual Meet, Coimbatore.
2. Das Roy, L., and Giri, S. (2007). Effects of low dose radiation and vitamin C treatment on metronidazole induced genotoxicity in mammalian test system in vivo. Oral presentation: Indian Academy of Pediatrics 22nd Annual Conference, Assam.
3. Das Roy, L., and Giri, S. (2007). Induction of Chromosomal Abnormality, Micronucleus and Sperm Shape Abnormality by Metronidazole and Vitamin C Intervention. Oral Presentation: National Conference on genomics: Impact on human health, Madhya Pradesh.
4. Das Roy, L., and Giri, S. (2007). Induction of Chromosomal Abnormality, Micronucleus and Sperm Shape Abnormality by chloroquine: A Commonly Used Pharmaceutical. Poster Presentation: 30th All India Cell Biology Conference and Symposium on – Molecule’s to Compartments: Cross- Talks and Network, New Delhi.
5. Das Roy, L., Pathangey, B.L., Tinder, T., Schettini, L.J., and Mukherjee, P. (2008). Study the influence of arthritis on breast cancer associated bone metastasis. Poster Presentation: Era of Hope, Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program, Baltimore.
6. Das Roy, L., Pathangey, B.L., Tinder, T., and Mukherjee, P. (2008). Breast cancer-associated metastasis is significantly increased in mice with autoimmune arthritis. Oral Presentation: Autumn Immunology Conference, Chicago.
7. Das Roy, L., Pathangey, B.L., Tinder, T., Gruber, H.E., and Mukherjee, P. (2009). Increased breast cancer associated metastasis in PyV MT mice induced to develop arthritis. Poster Presentation: American Association of Immunology Conference, Seattle.
8. Das Roy, L, Schettini, J.L., Sahraei, M., Gruber, H.E., Sahraei, M., and Mukherjee, P. (2010). Treatment with anti-IL 17A coupled with COX-2 inhibitor significantly decreases breast cancer associated secondary metastasis in a model of autoimmune arthritis. Poster presentation: Annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, Washington D.C.
9. Kidiyoor, A., Schettini, J., Das Roy, L., Besmer, D., and Mukherjee, P. (2011). Pancreatic tumor cells that develop within a Muc1 knock-out mice generate less immunosuppressive MDSCs in vitro. Poster Presentation: Annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, Orlando.
10. Nath, S., Das Roy, L., Rao S., Tinder, T., and Mukherjee, P. (2011) The oncogenic role of MUC1 in the context of TGF-β production and signaling. Poster Presentation: Annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, Orlando.
11. Besmer M, L., Curry, J., Das Roy, L., Tinder, T., Schettini, J., Hwang, S., Lee, Y., Gendler, S.J., and Mukherjee, P. (2011). MUC1 increases proliferation of pancreatic cancer in vivo and in vitro through regulation of ERK1/2. Poster Presentation: Annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, Orlando.
12. Das Roy, L., Curry, J., Sahraei, M., Kidiyoor, A., Besmer, D., Gruber, H.E and Mukherjee, P. (2011) Evaluate the Mechanism of Enhanced Metastasis Induced by Arthritis. Poster Presentation: Era of Hope, Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program, Orlando.
13. Das Roy, L., Curry, J., Sahraei, M., Kidiyoor, A., Besmer, D., Gruber, H.E and Mukherjee, P. (2012) Arthritis augments breast cancer metastasis: Role of mast cells and SCF/c-Kit signaling. Oral presentation: Annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, Chicago.
14. Besmer,D., Kidiyoor, A., Nath, S., Das Roy, L., Curry, J., and Mukherjee,P. (2012). Investigating the Role of IDO in MUC1 Expressing Breast Cancers. Poster presentation: Annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, Chicago.
15. Curry, J., Besmer, D.,*, Das Roy, L., Grover, P., Nath, S., Rao,S., Mukherjee, P. (2013). Combinational MUC1 vaccine therapy and Indomethacin treatment reduces breast tumor burden via a COX-independent pathway.’Abstract submitted to American Association of Cancer Research
16. Hastie, E*., Besmer, D*., Shah, N., Murphy, A., Moerdyk-Schauwecker, M., Molestina, C., Das Roy, L., Curry, J., Mukherjee, P., and Grdzelishvili, VZ. (2013). Oncolytic vesicular stomatitis virus in an immunocompetent model of pancreatic cancer. 15th Annual Graduate Research Symposium, March 13, Charlotte, North Carolina, Abstracts, ## (poster / oral presentation)
17. Hastie, E*., Besmer, D*., Shah, N., Murphy, A., Moerdyk-Schauwecker, M., Molestina, C., Das Roy, L., Curry, J., Mukherjee, P., and Grdzelishvili, VZ. (2013). Oncolytic vesicular stomatitis virus in an immunocompetent model of pancreatic cancer. 32nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Virology, July 20 – 24, State College, Pennsylvania, Abstracts, ## (poster / oral presentation)
18. Zhou, R., Curry, J., Grover, P., Das Roy, L., Leung, T., and Mukherjee,P. (2014) MUC1 enhances neuropilin-1 signaling in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Poster presentation: Annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, SanDiego

19. Das Roy, L., Zhou., R., Moore., L, Puri., R., Mukherjee., P. (2015) MUC1 expression in a panel of human breast cancer cell lines. Publication only: American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual meeting, Chicago, USA.

20. Allen, B., Wu, Shuta., Das Roy, L., Zhou, Ru., Fowler, A., Ogle, J., Garmon, C., Ogle, C., Mukherjee,P.(2015) Targeting Breast and Pancreatic Cancer with Antibody-guided PLGA Nanoparticles. Oral and Poster presentation :URC (Undergraduate Research Conference) 2015 at UNC Charlotte

21. Dréau,D., Moore, L., Das Roy, L., Wu, S., Puri, R., Mukherjee,P. (2015) Early detection of mammary tumors in vivo using a highly specific tumor antibody: Poster presentation :Breast Cancer Symposium, ASCO.

22. Das Roy, L., Zhou., R., Moore., L, Puri., R., Mukherjee., P. (2015) A monoclonal antibody with exceptional specificity across major breast cancer subtypes. Presentation: San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, December 2015.

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Adjunct Associate professor UNCC, Research Director at OncoTab Inc

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