Saumitra Das

[1] Saumitra Das, born on 20 January 1962[2] in the Indian state of West Bengal, did his doctoral studies on the host-pathogen interaction of Leishmania donovani, an intracellular parasite which causes leishmaniasis, at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology which earned him a PhD from the University of Calcutta in 1992.

[6] Das resides in the New Housing Colony of the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, Karnataka.

[8] During his post-doctoral days at UCLA, Das identified I-RNA, a small RNA molecule isolated from the yeast species of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and demonstrated its antiviral activity against viruses that cause polio and hepatitis C.[3] Later, at IISc, he focused on the translation of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and has done in vivo and in vitro experiments on the characterization of La, a cellular trans-acting factor.

[9] The team of scientists led by Das concentrates on the regulation of transcription and translation, especially hepatitis C virus and Coxsackievirus B3 RNA.

[10] The research conducted by Das, along with Anjali Anoop Karande (his colleague from the biochemistry department of IISc) and their teams were successful in the development of a vaccine for hepatitis C; the vaccine, a mixture of virus-like particles, worked by enveloping the HCV proteins.