Dr Santosh Kumar MIScT AFHEA

• PhD in Biotechnology, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, India. 2009

• MSc (Biochemistry), Sri Krishnadevaraya University, India. 2002

• BSc (Biochemistry), Sri Krishnadevaraya University, India. 2000

Santosh joined IMI as a Newton International Fellow (2017-2019), sponsored by the Royal Society, UK, to work with Dr. Peter Lund. His research findings during this time enabled a successful BBSRC responsive mode grant, in which he is currently a Co-Investigator. Earlier, Santosh did Ph. D. in the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, India and worked as Post-Doc in the University of Birmingham, USA and National Centre for Cell Science, Pune, India.

Santosh is a teacher in Genetics II module. He taught Prokaryotic gene regulation - In vitro methods.

Co-supervised four Postgraduate students, along with my PI, Dr. Peter Lund.

Tuberculosis is a major global problem, and new methods to tackle it are needed in the light of the spread of antimicrobial resistant strains of the causative organism, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This bacterium causes the development of a granuloma, a specialised structure made of cells from the infected host's immune system, within which the bacteria can survive long term in a latent state. The bacteria induce cell migration by stimulating the secretion of cytokines. Molecular events towards granuloma formation, although are not completely understood, depend, in part, on a non-essential chaperonin homologue, Cpn60.1.

Since pathogenicity and slow-growth make Mtb difficult to study, he aimed to develop an infection system using a related bacterium, M. marinum, that infects Zebrafish and forms caseating granulomas similar to M. tuberculosis in humans. He generated M. marinum cpn60.1 knock-out, confirmed by WGS and compared its infectivity in Zebrafish. While the mutant is indistinguishable with its wild-type in planktonic growth, it showed lower infectivity and persistence in Zebrafish embryos, resulted in lower expression of immune markers and showed differences in non-polar membrane lipid composition, suggesting an important role for Cpn60.1 in mycobacterial infections. Further, while phosphorylation-mediated oligomerization enables Cpn60.1 to functionally replace E. coli GroEL, mutations in the putative ATP-binding motif abolish this. Zebrafish infection studies with M. marinum expressing Cpn60.1 phospho-mimetic and ATPase mutants are in progress. Since Cpn60.1 plays an important role in TB establishment, these studies, therefore, bear the potential for novel non-antibiotic related treatments for TB.

Activities within the University of Birmingham:

• Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK
• Member, Biosciences Research Strategy Group
• Member PERCAT Steering Committee
• Member, PERCAT Conference Committee
• Member, Postdoc Mentoring Committee 

Activities outside the University of Birmingham:

• Member, Institute of Science and Technology, UK (MIScT).

• The VALIDATE Network Associate Member.

• Newton Prize Expert Reviewer for UNESCO, UK.

• Member, Microbiology Society, UK.

• Member, Tuberculosis Structural Genomics Consortium, USA.

•  Affiliate of Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS), EU.

• Member, Indian Crystallographic Association, India. 

Several journal editorial roles and theses examiner roles.