Rajesh Nanta, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow
Ph. D in Life Sciences, JNU, New Delhi, India

I did my B Sc. (Hons.) from Delhi University in 2002 and M Sc. (Life Sciences) from School of Life Sciences (SLS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India in 2004. I joined Radiation and Cancer Biology Lab at SLS, JNU for my PhD program and was successfully awarded in 2010. My area of research in Ph. D was to develop new strategies for cancer chemoprevention, based on dietary prevention and primarily focused on chemically induced skin and forestomach tumorigenesis in mice models. I also worked on HeLa cells to study the anti-cancer potential of carvacrol, amonoterpenoidphenol.  In February 2012, I joined laboratory of Prof. Rakesh Srivastava as postdoctoral fellow. Currently, we are working on cancer stem-like cells (CSCs), both in vitro and in vivo. Reactivation of stem cell-like characteristic markers in human cancers has posed a great challenge for cancer therapeutics and intervention. CSCs are known for their ability to self-renew, tumorigenic potential in xenograft models, chemoresistance and radioresistance in various tumors including glioblastoma, prostate, breast etc.

Research Interests

Cancer Biology, specially targeting signaling cascades which are deregulated in cancers, thus involved in stemness and chemo/radioresistance in cancer therapeutics.