Pranita P Sarangi, a professor of Biotechnology at IIT, Roorkee, has bagged this year’s Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award.
This is a highly prestigious scheme from the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology to identify and nurture outstanding young scientists with innovative ideas to pursue research in frontier areas of biotechnology.
Sarangi was chosen for the award for her scientific achievements and proposed work in the field of cancer immunology, as per an IIT Roorkee Press Release.
The Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award covers a research grant up to Rs 50 lakh and a cash award prize of Rs 1 lakh per year during the project period.
SARANGI HUMBLED
“This is a highly prestigious scheme from the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology to identify and nurture outstanding young scientists with innovative ideas to pursue research in frontier areas of biotechnology,” Sarangi said about her achievement.
THE ‘AWARDED WORK’
Sarangi’s work revolves around the immune system, which plays a crucial role in protecting the body from the development of cancers.
“In a a cancer patient, with progression of time, the anti-cancer immunity is gradually reduced and becomes non-functional. Scientists have shown that cancer cells adopt various mechanisms to make our immune cells non-functional….The proposed work will discover new molecular interactions in a cancer environment that re-educate our immune cells not to fight against the cancerous cells. Thus, this will help in the development of novel targeted therapeutics that could further help in managing cancer patients by restoring the functions of the immune cells”, she added.
ABOUT PROF SARANGI
Prof. Pranita has completed her PhD from College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tennessee, USA. She is also working as Special Research Volunteer, Laboratory of Cell and Developmental Biology, Molecular Biology Section, NIDCR/National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA since 2013. Her work has won her AAI Early Career Faculty Travel Grant Award, Immunology-2017, Washington DC, USA.
