Centre for Stem Cell Research

Paper Accepted:

Engineering safe anti-CD19-CD28ζ CAR T cells with CD8α hinge domain in serum-free media for adoptive immunotherapy. Muthuganesh Muthuvel, Thamizhselvi Ganapathy, Trent Spencer, Sunil S. Raikar, Saravanabhavan Thangavel, Alok Srivastava and Sunil Martin.

Invited Talks:

1. RV Shaji  delivered a talk on iPSC based disease modelling of haematological diseases at Current trends in translational Research Organized by PGIMER, Chandigarh on 18 March, 2025.
2. Sandya Rani B. delivered a talk on Digital imaging in publications at Hands-on Workshop on Virtual Microscopy Organized by The Department of Anatomy in collaboration with the Education Technology Unit and the Distance Education Unit, CMC Vellore on 21st March, 2025. 

3. Saravanabhavan Thangavel delivered a talk on Extracellular Vesicles for Engineering Hematopoietic Stem Cells" EVOLVE 2025, AIIMS, New Delhi on 24-26 March 2025. 

Events Held:

1. On April 24, 2025, the Center for Stem Cell Research (a unit of inStem, Bengaluru) hosted a lecture by Prof. Vedantam Rajshekhar, Consultant in Neurosurgery, CMC Vellore Chittoor Campus and Former Professor & Head, Department of Neurosurgery and Neurosciences, Christian Medical College Vellore, India. Title of the Talk: Four Decades of Research in Neurocysticercosis at CMC: A Story of Interdisciplinary Transnational Collaboration. Total Participants: 50 In-person and 81Virtual
2. On April 11, 2025, the Center for Stem Cell Research (a unit of inStem, Bengaluru) hosted a lecture by Dr. Seetharam Jayaraman, Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology, and Director of the Structural Biology Center at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), Center for Cancer Research, Memphis, TN. Title of the Talk: Unlocking Structural Biology's Role in Revolutionizing Drug Discovery Total Participants: 50 In-person and 13 Virtual
3. On March 27, 2025, the Center for Stem Cell Research (a unit of inStem, Bengaluru) hosted a lecture by  Prof. Priya Abraham, Clinical Virology, Christian Medical College, Vellore and Former Director, National Institute of Virology -NIV and former Head, Virology, CMC Vellore. Title of the Talk: Waging a War Against an Unseen Enemy- A Story of the Multi-pronged Fight against the Viruses. Total Participants:  90 in-person and 86 virtual participants.
4. The Center for Stem Cell Research (CSCR) successfully hosted an engaging Industry Session on Tuesday, 25 March 2025, featuring a talk by Dr. Edward Wong, Regional Expert in Gene Writing and Editing (Asia Pacific), from Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT). Title of the Talk: CRISPR Knock-In Reimagined: Solutions for Superior Outcomes Total Participants: 37

Thesis Awarded:

• Ms. Kirti Prasad, working under the guidance of Dr. Mohankumar, successfully completed her viva on April 16, 2025. Thesis Title: Therapeutic genome editing for  Beta-hemoglobinopathies using  CRISPR Cas 9-based tools.
• Ms. Porkizhi Arjunan, mentored by Dr. Srujan K. Marepally, completed her viva on April 4, 2025. Thesis Title: Lipid-mediated Nucleic acid therapy Haemophilia. 

Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC) data submission: NIL 

Paper Published:  

1. Ganesh Parasuraman, Elizabeth Vinod, Abel Livingston and Deepak Vinod Francis. Advancing Preservation: Plastination and Deplastination of Human Osteochondral Units for Enhanced Histological Analyses in Education and Forensic Sciences. European Journal of Anatomy. Published : January 2025. https://doi.org/10.52083/VWKD3113 

Invited Talks: 

1. Elizabeth Vinod delivered a talk on  “ Clotting Mechanism and its Orthobiologics Application” at 58th Annual Conference of the Tamil Nadu Orthopaedics Association (TNOACON 2025), Sangamitra Convention Center on 7th February 2025.
2. Dr Mohankumar KM delivered a talk on “Therapeutic genome Editing for Hematological Disorders” in SZACBICON-2025 held at JIPMER, Puducherry, India from 24-25 January 2025.
3. Dr Srujan Marepally delivered invited lecture on "Understanding the structural parameters of the cationic lipids for developing lipid based nucleic acid therapeutics" at Biologics conference health at Goa on 30th -31st January, 2025. 

Conferences attended:

Dr Srujan Marepally attended Vellore Endocrinology International Conference held at CMC Vellore on 10th and 11th January, 2025. 

Other updates

Ph.D Viva conducted for Ms. Anila George from the lab of Dr Mohankumar KM on 31st  January 2025.

Paper Published :

• Chandraprabha PB, Azhagiri MKK, Venkatesan V, Magis W, Prasad K, Suresh S, Pai AA, Marepally S, Srivastava A, Mohankumar KM, Martin DIK, Thangavel S. Enhanced fetal hemoglobin production via dual-beneficial mutation editing of the HBG promoter in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells for β-hemoglobinopathies. Stem Cell Res Ther. 2024 Dec 31;15(1):504. doi: 10.1186/s13287-024-04117-0. PMID: 39736768; PMCID: PMC11687217.
• Elizabeth Vinod, Ganesh Parasuraman, Jeya Lisha J,Jithu James Varghese, Abel Livingston, Grace Rebekah, Deepak Vinod Francis, Solomon Sathishkumar, Alfred Job Daniel, Boopalan Ramasamy. Comparative Assessment of Chondral Defect Repair Using Human Bone Marrow- and Adipose Tissue-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Adult and Foetal Articular Cartilage-Derived Chondrocytes, and Chondroprogenitors: An Ex-Vivo Model. Biotechnology Letters. January 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-024-03558-0

Paper Accepted:

• Koodamvetty A and Thangavel S. Advancing Precision Medicine: Recent Innovations in Gene Editing Technologies. Advanced Science (Jan, 2025)

Invited Talks :

• Dr Saravanabhavan Thangavel and Dr Mohankumar KM delivered a talk on Introduction to cell and gene therapy at Department of Anatomy, Christian Medical college Vellore on 16th Jan, 2025

Outreach

• 1st year MBBS students from Department of Anatomy, Christian Medical College, Vellore visited CSCR Core facility on 15th Jan 2025. Event coordinated by Sandya Rani. B, Scientist-D, CSCR, Vellore. No. of participants - 30.

Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC) data submission: NIL