Assistant Professor
Unit: Drug Discovery and Development
Auburn University
Harrison College of Pharmacy
3306d Walker Building
Auburn, AL 36849
Email: akm0060@auburn.edu
Phone: 334-844-7404
Fax: 334-844-8331
Now accepting applications for Masters and Ph.D. students.
Amit Kumar Mitra, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Drug Discovery and Development, joining the Harrison College of Pharmacy on Oct. 1, 2017. He received his B.SC. in Zoology (Honors - Cell and Molecular Biology, Genetics, Biostatistics, Microbiology, Biochemistry), Chemistry, Botany from the University of Calcutta in India in 2001 and his M.SC. in Zoology, Cytogenetics and Molecular Biology (Special Paper) from the University of Calcutta in 2003. Dr. Mitra went on to complete his Ph.D. from the Central Drug Research Institute (India) at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2009. While completing his education, Dr. Mitra was a Research Associate with the Central Drug Research Institute.
Prior to joining HCOP, Dr. Mitra completed post-doctoral work with the Pharmacogenomics Laboratory in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota between 2009-12. He stayed on for one more year as a Research Associate in the Institute of Human Genetics before accepting a position as Research Assistant Professor in University of Minnesota’s Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development from 2013-17.
Professionally, Dr. Mitra is involved with Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN), American Society of Hematology (ASH), American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), American Association of Indian Scientists in Cancer Research (AAISCR), The American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT), International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX), and the Indian Genome Variation Database Consortium (IGVdb). Additionally, he has served as an ad-hoc journal reviewer for Oncotarget, PLoS One, BMC Medical Genetics, Molecular Biology Reports, and Experimental and Molecular Pathology.
Extensive inter-individual variation in response to chemotherapeutic drugs is a major limitation in achieving consistent therapeutic effect in human diseases. Not all patients respond equally well to treatment and those who do often acquire therapy resistance over the course of treatment.
Dr. Mitra's current research focuses on identifying the genomic and pharmacogenomic factors governing the wide heterogeneity in human diseases including multiple myeloma, AML and solid tumors that influence susceptibility, disease progression, clinical aggressiveness, drug sensitivity and eventual treatment outcomes.
In recent years, he has combined in vitro drug chemo-sensitivity modeling, next-generation sequencing and CRISPR technologies, single cell transcriptomics and computational approaches like supervised machine learning-based prediction algorithms to predict both inter-tumor (between tumor) as well as intra-tumor (within tumor or subclonal) heterogeneity in drug response. His long term goal is to create a comprehensive pharmacogenomics-based signature profile incorporating genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic information that can be used as a robust predictor qualitatively and quantitatively associated with drug sensitivity/resistance and the choice of effective personalized pharmacogenomics-guided secondary therapies.
As a genomics and pharmacogenomics expert, Dr. Mitra is also involved in collaborative efforts to identify novel, de novo variants associated with the risk of complex human disorders like autism and non-syndromic cleft lip and palate.
| Year | Award |
|---|---|
| 2015 | Brian D. Novis Junior Investigator Award | International Myeloma Foundation |
| 2012 | Best Post-Doc Poster Award | Rho Chi Research Symposium, University of Minnesota |
| 2011 | Best Post-Doc Poster Award | Rho Chi Research Symposium, University of Minnesota |
| 2006-09 | Senior Research Fellowship | Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, India |
| 2004-06 | Junior Research Fellowship | Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, India |
| 2003 | Junior Research Fellowship | State Level Eligibility Test (SLET) | West Bengal, India |
| 2003 | Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), India | All India Rank-281 |
| 2002 | National Eligibility Test (NET) | India | Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, India (among Top 20% of the 2% candidates who qualified) |
| 2001 | Merit Scholarship | University of Calcutta, India |
| 1993 | All India Talent Search Scholarship | INCEF, India | Awarded by Prime Minister of India |
NIH U54 grant (2017)
Brian D. Novis Junior Investigator Research Grant (2015)
UMGC Single-cell Genomics Grant (2014)
Dr. Amit Mitra Bibliography/Published Works: Click