Akhilesh Pandey, M.D., Ph.D.

 M.D., Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, India, 1988
Intern in Medicine, Kilpauk Medical College, Madras, India, 1990
Ph.D. in Pathology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 1995
Postdoc in Pathology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 1996
Resident in Clinical Pathology, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 1998
Postdoc, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA 2000
Visiting Scientist, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark 2001


Research Interests:

Cell surface receptors transmit signals to the interior of the cell upon binding to a ligand. These signals are generally transmitted through proteins with catalytic activity (such as kinases) as well as those without any catalytic activity (such as adapters). Protein phosphorylation is a major mechanism of regulating the activity of these proteins and the formation of multi-protein complexes. We have cloned a number of signaling molecules that are involved in signal transduction through receptor tyrosine kinases (EGF and PDGF receptors), cytokine receptors (IL-3 and TSLP receptor), antigen receptors (T and B cell receptors), oncogenic kinases (Bcr-Abl) as well as receptor serine-threonine kinases (TGF-beta and BMP receptors). Using a combination of molecular biology and proteomics-based approaches including mass spectrometry, our laboratory aims to dissect these signaling pathways further and to elucidate the mechanisms of cross-talk between them. We are developing methods to identify novel proteins involved in these signal transduction pathways in a global fashion using mass spectrometry based high-throughput methods. We are also interested in genomic analyses using bioinformatics to catalog all proteins and their modular domain structures and interaction partners

Areas of Current Research:

  • Phosphorylation and signal transduction
  • Mass spectrometry and proteomics
  • Bioinformatics and biological databases
  • Comparative genomics

Awards and Honors:

Experimental Pathologist-in-training Award, American Society for Investigative Pathology, 1996
Howard Temin Award, National Cancer Institute, 1997
Kimmel Scholar Award, Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research, 2003
Beckman Young Investigator Award, Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, 2004