Molecular & Cancer Biomarkers

Biography

Shashwati Basak serves as the Head and Sr. Lead Investigator of Clinical Genomics Group in Exploratory Clinical and Translational Research (ECTR), Biocon Bristol-Myers Squibb Research and Development Center (BBRC), Bangalore. She started the ECTR department in 2010 and played an instrumental role in setting up the Clinical Biomarkers laboratories at BBRC. Her current research interests involve assay development and qualification of Clinical Biomarkers, especially in Oncology and Immuno-oncology and its use in clinical trials, while collaborating with multiple internal teams and global stakeholders. Her other interests are to pursue exploratory and translational research to understand the underlying mechanisms of cancer. In her additional roles, she also provides leadership in Managing the regulatory paperwork and clinical sample logistics to handle global clinical trial sample shipments for BMS to support the clinical biomarker work. She obtained a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and studied DNA-protein interactions to decipher novel transcription activation mechanisms in prokaryotic model systems. She carried out Post-doctoral research from The Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, San Diego and Stanford School of Medicine, Palo Alto. Her research in these two places was focused on understanding the intriguing complexities of cancer signaling pathways. She worked as a Research Scientist in the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), San Francisco on multiple projects involving translational research in Cancer. She has published her research work in numerous top peer-reviewed international journals such as Cell, Molecular Cell etc. She has also served as a Reviewer for many American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Journals like Cancer Research and Clinical Cancer Research and written and obtained international grants.

Abstract

Abstract : Quantitative PCR-based cancer biomarker assays in clinical trials