Assistant Professor | Senior Lecturer
M.Tech | Ph.D
Dr. Mahalakshmi is a clinical research professional with a Ph.D. in Cancer Epigenetics and has been involved in the field of clinical trials for past 6 years. She has strong pre-clinical cancer research experience (in vitro and in vivo) with interdisciplinary flavor. She has worked as clinical trial coordinator and co-investigator in clinical trials on influenza vaccine, cardiovascular biomarker studies and ICMR surveillance studies. she has expertise in clinical trial documentation including clinical trial protocol, informed consent document, SOPs, manuscripts and clinical study reports.
Her research interests are two pronged. In experimental research, she is interested in addressing epigenetic biomarkers for cancer. She uses profiling markers in clinical tissue samples, bioinformatic approaches and in vitro experiments for the same. In clinical trials, she is interested addressing design challenges in clinical trials, participant right and satisfaction from clinical trials and public awareness about clinical trials.
Ph.D. (2011-2018) SASTRA University
M.Tech. Industrial Biotechnology 5 yr Integrated (2006-2011) SASTRA University
GATE Young Faculty Research Grant – 2019, SRIHER
Histone deacetylase (HDAC) targeting small molecule inhibitors have shown promising efficacy in EGFR mutant lung cancer and combination therapy of EGFR TKIs with HDAC inhibitors have been shown to overcome drug resistance in lung cancer. Combination of these two classes of small molecules such as Erlotinib with HDACi YF454A, Gefitinib and Sorafenib with HDACi SAHA, Osimertinib with HDAC3 selective inhibitors, etc., have shown promising results in lung cancer cells. This project attempted to understand the expression status of HDAC3 in EGFR mutant lung cancer and the correlation of this expression with the EGFR mutation status and documented resistance to EGFR-TKI.