Dr. Swagata Ghosh’s research interest belongs to the field of infectious diseases, host-pathogen interaction and parasite biology. During her post-doctoral fellowship, she studied the infectious gastro-intestinal inflammatory disease, amoebic-colitis, which prompted her interest in finding new ways to manage inflammation and tissue destruction in infectious diseases. At AMRF, Dr. Ghosh is focusing on the infectious corneal diseases, commonly called microbial keratitis, where the infection causes severe inflammation and ulceration in the cornea, often leading to blindness.

Her approaches include the perspectives of both the pathogen as well as the host.  To counter the growing threat of antibiotic resistance, she is interested in understanding the molecular basis of microbial virulence for developing anti-virulence strategies for managing corneal infections. On the other hand, she is involved in identifying the host factors that are critical regulators of inflammation in microbial keratitis so as to validate them as targets for combating infection-induced inflammatory damage.

Key Publications:

1. Ghosh S, Farr L, Singh A, Leaton LA, Padalia J, Shirley DA, Sullivan D, Moonah S. COP9 signalosome is an essential and druggable parasite target that regulates protein degradation. PLoS pathogens. 2020 Sep 22;16(9):e1008952.
2. Farr L, Ghosh S, Moonah S. Role of MIF Cytokine/CD74 receptor pathway in protecting against injury and promoting repair. Frontiers in Immunology. 2020;11.
3. Xu W, Ren M, Ghosh S, Qian K, Luo Z, Zhang A, Zhang C, Cui J. Defects of CTLA-4 are associated with regulatory T cells in myasthenia gravis implicated by intravenous immunoglobulin therapy. Mediators of inflammation. 2020 Feb 14;2020.
4. Farr L, Ghosh S, Jiang N, Watanabe K, Parlak M, Bucala R, Moonah S. CD74 signaling links inflammation to intestinal epithelial cell regeneration and promotes mucosal healing. Cellular and molecular gastroenterology and hepatology. 2020 Jan 1;10(1):101-12.
5. Ghosh S, Padalia J, Ngobeni R, Abendroth J, Farr L, Shirley DA, Edwards T, Moonah S. Targeting parasite-produced MIF as an anti-virulence strategy with antibiotic-antibody combination to reduce tissue damage. The Journal of infectious diseases. 2019.
6. Ghosh S, Jiang N, Farr L, Ngobeni R, Moonah S. Parasite-produced MIF cytokine: Role in immune evasion, invasion, and pathogenesis. Frontiers in immunology. 2019 Aug 21;10:1995.
7. Ghosh S, Padalia J, Moonah S. Tissue destruction caused by Entamoeba histolytica parasite: cell death, inflammation, invasion, and the gut microbiome. Current clinical microbiology reports. 2019 Mar;6(1):51-7.
8. Ghosh S, Leaton LA, Farr L, Barfield A, Moonah S. Interaction between parasite-encoded JAB1/CSN5 and macrophage migration inhibitory factor proteins attenuates its proinflammatory function. Scientific reports. 2018 Jul 6;8(1):1-9.

• Awarded Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship 2020-2021 by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India.