Payel Roy
Assistant Professor

Ph.D: Natioanl Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, India

Post-doctoral research:
La Jolla Institute for Immunology, San Diego, USA (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Immunology Center of Georgia, Augusta, USA (Asst. Research Scientist)

Year of Joining: 2025

Email: proy@iisc.ac.in

The immune system is a complex network of cells and organs that employ diverse specialized sensors and weapons to “recognize” and “eliminate” danger. This leads to a physiological state called “inflammation” that protects us from harmful invasion. Like every other war that history has ever witnessed, inflammation is associated with chaos, collateral damage and a loss of homeostatic balance. Under normal conditions multiple regulatory processes control the timing, strength, and duration of an inflammatory response. However, inappropriate control of inflammation can occur if immune cells escape the normal checkpoints and go rogue. Such a state of “corruption” is promoted by components of our modern lifestyle (panel A), resulting in an excess of pro-inflammatory “fighting” activity and reduction in anti-inflammatory “healing” activity (panel B). This unresolved inflammation is now implicated in the development of all major chronic diseases in humans, including cancer, metabolic diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, autoimmune conditions, cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases. Clinical diagnosis of chronic diseases is often delayed because their development involves a long asymptomatic latent phase. Traditional approaches are not sufficient for detecting early signs of immune dysfunction. Also, current treatments do not specifically mitigate the inflammatory risks. We aim to combine next-generation sequencing techniques, immunological and metabolic assays, computational analysis of high-throughput data, biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, to understand immune cell maladaptation and identify precise biomarkers and druggable molecular targets (panel C).

Human blood is a valuable resource that can be accessed in healthy or diseased individuals. T cells can constitute up to 70% of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells. Specific engagement of the T cell receptors (TCRs) with their cognate antigen triggers activation, polarization and formation of immunological memory. Different T cells express unique combination of molecules that is shaped by intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Circulating T cells can report to us about the status at distant tissue sites. Thus, gaining insights into “what they see and remember” (antigens and TCR), “where they go or reside” (tissue site and microenvironment), and “who they are” (phenotypes and programs) creates the possibility to track or modify disease-relevant human T cells. We have optimized pipelines to identify the antigenic targets, TCR specificity, phenotypic diversity and molecular signatures of antigen-specific T cells in the context of chronic metabolic diseases like cardiovascular disease (Roy, Nature Reviews Immunology, 2022; Roy, Circulation Research, 2022; Freuchet* and Roy*, Nature Immunology, 2023; Roy, Suthahar, Frontiers in Immunology, 2024). These will be combined with our expertise in utilizing pathway-based “reductionist” approaches (Roy, Oncogene, 2017; Chatterjee* and Roy^* et al., Frontiers in Immunology, 2019) in gaining mechanistic insights into the perturbations of regulatory networks in pathogenic T cells.

Our goal will be to generate a “systems” level understanding of rewired immunological circuits.