Dr Taranjit Singh Rai

Overview

Overview:

Dr Taranjit Singh Rai has more than 10 years of research experience in the field of ageing, cancer and ageing associated diseases. Taranjit has a PhD from PGIMER, Chandigarh, India and Post Doctoral training at the Beatson Institute of Cancer Research, Glasgow. Taranjit has won several awards for outstanding research and teaching such as young scientist and UWS STARS Award. Taranjit has been educated in entrepreneurship at Babson College, Boston, USA where he finished a Saltire foundation fellowship programme, which is a condensed MBA style entrepreneurial course. Taranjit has published more than 25 collaborative papers in high impact peer-reviewed journals (h-index of 19 and >1500 citations) such as Genes and Development, Nucleic Acids Research, Nature, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Genetics etc. He has presented his research at various national and international conferences and is a keen public speaker. His work has been highlighted in national and international newspapers and in the mainstream media (BBC).

Research Interests:

Taranjit is interested in the role of cellular senescence in health and disease. Senescent cells accumulate in tissues of humans and other organisms with age. Cellular senescence is thought to promote cell and tissue ageing. Clearance of senescent cells from tissues of model organisms has been shown to be beneficial in multiple ageing diseases such as cardiovascular, osteoarthritis and more recently in Alzheimer’s. Taranjit is interested in utilizing novel senescence signatures to predict patient outcomes, risk stratification and personalized medicine. Taranjit’s group is using various senescence model systems to test compounds for their ability to eliminate/kill senescent cells. Such compounds are called senolytics. The laboratory utilizes artificial intelligence, machine learning tools and collaborates with mathematicians, programmers and bioinformaticians to predict the vulnerabilities of senescent cells with hope of finding new therapeutic drugs. Taranjit is looking for talented PhD students to join his laboratory. Support is also available for talented postdoctoral candidates to apply for fellowships from EMBO, Marie-Curie and other funding bodies.

Teaching Interests:

Cell/Molecular biology, Epigenetics, Ageing, Chromatin, Bio-entrepreneurship.

Grant Reviewer:MRC, BBSRC, AR UK, Dunhill Medical Trust etc.

Journal Reviewer:Nature Communications, Genome Research, Aging Cell, Ageing Research Reviews, Oncotarget etc.