Kajal Gupta, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery. She earned her PhD from Gujarat University, India. After moving to the U.S., she received postdoctoral training from the State University of New York, Binghamton where her research was focused on the study of Biofilm Formation and Antimicrobial Resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. She demonstrated that in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, biofilm tolerance is linked to biofilm development, with the transition to the irreversible attachment stage regulated by the two-component hybrid SagS, marking the timing when biofilms switch to the high-level tolerance phenotype. Gupta received her additional postdoctoral training from the National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases (NCBID), where she studied the role of antimicrobial peptides from various vertebrates and invertebrates. She was able to purify and identify various novel antimicrobial peptides, showing promising effects against escape groups of bacteria and antimicrobial-resistant Francisella tularensis (tularemia), Acinetobacter baumannii, and MRSA.
Since joining Rush University, Gupta characterized Apoptotic Compensatory Proliferation Cignaling (ACPS) in cancer and determined the occurrence of CPS in various cancer cell lines, and examined for ACPS Vesicles as a biomarker in cancer patients. She is currently working on developing translational Microbial-Based Cancer Treatments (MBCTs) to improve patient outcomes. The major goal of the study is to investigate the extent to which pathogen-mediated vaccines can be used in place of live infections. In addition to developing MBCTs, her primary research focuses on investigating “persister cells” in the context of hormonal therapy for breast cancer and deciphering the role of the microbiome in the development of persister cells in patients on hormonal therapy. This unique capability of persister cells to stay dormant is believed to be the root of the emergence of drug-resistant tumors; therefore, there is a great need to find novel ways to eliminate persisters. Gupta aims to better characterize persisters and their vulnerabilities by applying high-throughput techniques, clonal analysis/expansion, novel drug screens, and “omics” methods.
