Faculty


Daman Saluja (Retd.)

Sr. Professor

Medical Biotechnology
Email: dsalujach1959@gmail.com

Prof. Daman Saluja, is currently a Professor at Medical Biotechnology Laboratory, Dr B R Ambedkar Center for Biomedical Research, University of Delhi, North Campus. She got her Doctoral degree in 1986 from University of Delhi, Delhi. Prof. Daman Saluja worked as a Research Scientist in various capacity (1987-1990) at University of Delhi. She then joined New York University Medical Center, U.S.A. where she worked as Assistant Research Scientist at Department of Biochemistry (1990-1993). Later she joined Department of Microbiology (NYU medical Center) and worked as Assistant Research Scientist from 1993-1997.

Dr Saluja joined Dr B R Ambedkar Center for Biomedical Research, University of Delhi as Reader in 1997 and later became Professor in 2007. She was also Director of Dr B R Ambedkar Center for Biomedical Research from 2006 to 2010.

Prof Saluja has received several awards and scholarships including National Science Talent Scholarship (1975-1984). She is recipient of Prestigious, INSA Young Scientist Medal and LSS Kumar Memorial Award in 1989 by Indian National Science Academy. On May 11th, 2013 on Technology Day she was awarded ‘The Biotech Product & Process Development and Commercialization Award’ of 2013 by the Honourable President of India for her outstanding contribution in the development of novel method of Beacon based PCR diagnostic kit for Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis. She was also selected for Khorana Program Technology Transfer course 2013 under Indo-US science and technology Forum.

For the past twenty years, Laboratory of Prof. Saluja has been working in the area of Medical Biotechnology. Her primary contribution is in the development of beacon based Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) mediated diagnostic assays for sexually transmitted diseases caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis and Trichomonas vaginalis, Currently, her lab is working on LAMP based diagnosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In collaboration with Industry, Dr Saluja has also designed a low cost, hand held fluorescent reader. More recently, her group has developed low cost, novel method of qPCR for the detection and quantification of bcr/abl transcript for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) and for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and are also looking into anti-leukemic activity of plant extracts. She is author of ten patent applications and one Indian and one US patent has been granted. Her laboratory is also looking at regulation of gene expression in eukaryotes using sin3B as a model system. Sin3B is an important co-repressor involved in p53 mediated gene repression under genotoxic and non-genotoxic stress. Their findings suggest that Sin3 plays a pivotal role in regulating cell cycle and apoptosis under conditions of cellular stress. More recently, they have established that Sin3 regulates life span and autophagy in eukaryotes.

Prof Daman Saluja has published more than 85 original research papers in International Journals. She has produced 20 Ph.D. students and more than 50 students have done project work (M.Sc and SURP) under her guidance. She has been invited to more than 40 National and International conferences.

Honours & Awards:
  1. 1. Selected for Khorana technology transfer course held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA July 2013

  2. 2. Received The Biotech Product & Process Development and Commercialization Award’ of May 2013

Ongoing Projects:
  1. 1. “Understanding the role of SIN3, A global transcription regulator in nongenotoxic stress mediated modulation of gene expression" Funding Agency DST, 2016-19.

  2. 2. “Development of a hand held molecular point-of-care test device for infectious diseases (Indo-Canada Impact project)" Funding Agency DBT, 2017-19.

  3. 3. “Validation, Field Trial Scale-up and Commercialisation of Sensitive and Specific PCR based Diagnostic kit and Instruments for diagnosis of Chlamydia and Nisseria infection Biotechnology industry research assistance council" Funding Agency (DBT-BIPP), 2014-16.

Patents Granted:
  1. 1. A novel beacon-based Diagnostic Probe / Tool/Kit for Detection of Translocation 8; 21 in Acute Myeloid Leukemia patients and method of Working for the same. Patent No:364891(application number IN 1568/DEL/2013). DATE OF FILING 24/5/13, date of grant: 19.04.21)

  2. 2. A Novel Oligonucleotide-based Diagnostic Probe/Tool/Kit for Tuberculosis Detection and Method of Working for same patent filed in India Patent No: 382627. (Application Number IN 77/DEL.2013) Date of filing: 10/1/13 Date of grant: 24/3/21

  3. 3. A new Fluorescent Beacon probe based diagnostic Tool/Kit for molecular detection of Translocation t(9;22)/ BCR - ABL1 in Leukemic patients and Method of Working for the same patent No: 327607 (application number IN1569/DEL/2013 DATE OF FILING 24/5/13, date of grant: 17.12.19)

  4. 4. US patent granted: 'PCR-based detection method for Chlamydia trachomatis Patent number US 9,139,883 B2 (Filed on Aug. 29, 2011, as Appl. No. 13/220,268)

  5. 5. PCT application approved for the prototype kit for diagnosis of Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae in (PCT/INO6/00282 dated 7.8.2006)

  6. 6. Patent granted for ' A multiplex PCR - based process for detecting Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae patent number is 239908 Indian Patent Office (Application number 3437/DEL/2005, Date of filing of patent application Dt. 22.12.2005)

Selected Recent Publications:
  1. 48. Geetika Arora#, Jyoti Taneja#, Priya Bhardwaj, Shorya Goyal, Kumar Naidu, Sunita. K. Yadav, Daman Saluja*, Sunita Jetly*(2022). Adverse events and breakthrough infections associated with COVID-19 vaccination in the Indian population. J Medical Virology 2022: 1-8 https://doi/10.1002/jmv.27708

  2. 47. Jetly S.#, Priya Bhardwaj#,Geetika Arora,Daman Saluja, Sunita K. Yadav, Kumar P Naiduand Jyoti Taneja(2022) Hesitancy and Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccination amid the Second Wave of Pandemic in India: A General Population Study Asian Pacific Journal of Public health1-4 doi.org./10.1177/10105395221077062 journals.sagepub.com/home/aph

  3. 46. Iqbal, M. A. Siddiqui, S. Rehman A U Siddiqui, F. A. Singh P. , Kumar B , Saluja D. (2021) Multiomics integrative analysis reveals antagonistic roles of CBX2 and CBX7 in metabolic reprogramming of breast cancer Molecular Oncology 15:1450-1465 doi: 10.1002/1878-0261.12894

  4. 45. Uboveja A, Satija YK, Siraj F, Sharma I, Saluja D. p73 - NAV3 axis plays a critical role in suppression of colon cancer metastasis.Oncogenesis. 2020 Feb 6;9(2):12. doi: 10.1038/s41389-020-0193-4.PMID: 32029709

  5. 44. Kumar D, Narang R, Sreenivas V, Rastogi V, Bhatia J, Saluja D, Srivastava K. (2020) Circulatory miR-133b and miR-21 as Novel Biomarkers in Early Prediction and Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease. Genes (Basel). 2020 Feb 5;11(2):164. doi: 10.3390/genes11020164.PMID: 32033332

  6. 43. Tanwer P, Kolora SRR, Babbar A, Saluja D, Chaudhry U (2020) Identification of potential therapeutic targets in Neisseria gonorrhoeae by an in-silico approach.. J Theor Biol. 2020 Apr 7;490:110172. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2020.110172. Epub 2020 Jan 20.PMID: 3197217

  7. 42. Dwivedi M, Muralidhar S, Saluja D (2020) Hibiscus sabdariffa Extract Inhibits Adhesion, Biofilm Initiation and Formation in Candida albicans.Indian J Microbiol. 2020 Mar;60(1):96-106. doi: 10.1007/s12088-019-00835-9. Epub 2019 Nov 4.PMID: 32089579

  8. 41. Pawar A, Jha P, Chopra M, Chaudhry U, Saluja D. (2020) Screening of natural compounds that targets glutamate racemase of Mycobacterium tuberculosis reveals the anti-tubercular potential of flavonoids .Sci Rep. 2020 Jan 22;10(1):949. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-57658-8.PMID: 31969615

  9. 40. Joon D, Nimesh M, Gupta S, Kumar C, Varma-Basil M, Saluja D. (2019) Development and evaluation of rapid and specific sdaA LAMP-LFD assay with Xpert MTB/RIF assay for diagnosis of tuberculosis. J Microbiol Methods. 159:161-166. doi: 10.1016/j.mimet.2019.03.002

  10. 39. Srivastava K, Chandra S, Narang R, Bhatia J, Saluja D. (2018) E-selectin gene in essential hypertension: a case-control study. Eur J Clin Invest. 2018 Jan;48(1). doi: 10.1111/eci.12868. Epub 2017 Dec 13

  11. 38. Sharma M, Pandey R, Saluja D. (2018) ROS is the major player in regulating altered autophagy and lifespan in sin-3 mutants of C. elegans. Autophagy. 2018; 14(7):1239-1255. doi: 10.1080/15548627.2018.1474312

  12. 37. Sachdev D, Wasnik K, Patel AL, Sonkar SC, Desai P, Mania-Pramanik J, Kerkar S, Sethi S, Sharma N, Mittal P, Ghope P, Khandhari A, Saluja D. (2018). Multi-centric validation of an in-house-developed beacon-based PCR diagnostic assay kit for Chlamydia and Neisseria and portable fluorescence detector. J Med Microbiol. 2018 Sep;67(9):1287-1293. doi: 10.1099/jmm.0.000803

  13. 36. Gupta S, Kumar P, Kaur H, Sharma N, Gupta S, Saluja D, Bharti AC, Das B. (2018) Constitutive activation and overexpression of NF-?B/c-Rel in conjunction with p50 contribute to aggressive tongue tumorigenesis. Oncotarget.31;9(68):33011-33029. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.26041

  14. 35. Zafar A, Singh S, Satija YK, Saluja D, Naseem I. (2018) Deciphering the molecular mechanism underlying anticancer activity of coumestrol in triple-negative breast cancer cells. Toxicol In Vitro;46:19-28. doi: 10.1016/j.tiv.2017.10.007

  15. 34. Pawar A, Jha P, Konwar C, Chaudhry U, Chopra M, Saluja D. (2018) Ethambutol targets the glutamate racemase of Mycobacterium tuberculosis-an enzyme involved in peptidoglycan biosynthesis. Appl MicrobiolBiotechnol. doi: 10.1007/s00253-018-9518

  16. 33. Pandey R, Sharma M, Saluja D. (2018) SIN-3 as a key determinant of lifespan and its sex-dependent differential role on healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans. Aging (Albany NY);10(12):3910-3937. doi: 10.18632/aging.101682

  17. 32. Sachdev D, Kumari I, Bala M, Kumar V, Saluja D. (2017) Mutation pattern inthe genome of Neisseria gonorrhoeae and its association with multidrug-resistant isolates from Delhi, India. Indian J Med Microbiol. 2017 Jan-Mar;35(1):109-112. doi: 10.4103/ijmm. IJMM_16_46

  18. 31. Pandey R, Saluja D. (2017)Hydrogen peroxide agarose gels for electrophoretic analysis of RNA.Anal Biochem. 2017; 534:24-27. doi: 10.1016/j.ab.2017.07.007

  19. 30. Tanwer P, Bauer S, Heinrichs E, Panda G, Saluja D, Rudel T, Beier D.(2017). Post-transcriptional regulation of target genes by the sRNA FnrS in Neisseria gonorrhoeae.Microbiology. 2017 Jul;163(7):1081-1092. doi: 10.1099/mic.0.000484

  20. 29. Joon D, Nimesh M, Varma-Basil M, Saluja D (2017). Evaluation of improved IS6110 LAMP assay for diagnosis of pulmonary and extra pulmonary tuberculosis. J Microbiol Methods. 2017 May 14;139:87-91. doi: 10.1016/j.mimet.2017.05.007. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 28514671

  21. 28. Saini V, Manral A, Arora R, Meena P, Gusain S, Saluja D, Tiwari M. (2017) Novel synthetic analogs of diallyl disulfide triggers cell cycle arrest and apoptosis via ROS generation in MIA PaCa-2 cells. Pharmacol Rep. 14;69(4):813-821. doi: 10.1016/j.pharep.2017.03.006.

  22. 27. Sonkar S C, Wasnik k, Kumar A, Sharma V, Mittal P, Mishra P K, Bharadwaj M, Saluja D (2017) Evaluating the utility of syndromic case management for three sexually transmitted infections in symptomatic women visiting hospitals in Delhi, India”, Scientific reports 3;7(1):1465. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-01422-y.

  23. 26. Sachdev D, Kumari I, Bala M, Kumar V, Saluja D. (2017) Mutation pattern in the genome of Neisseria gonorrhoeae and its association with multidrug-resistant isolates from Delhi, India. Indian J Med Microbiol. 2017 Jan-Mar;35(1):109-112. doi: 10.4103/ijmm. IJMM_16_46.

  24. 25. Sonkar SC, Sachdev D, Mishra PK, Kumar A, Mittal P, Saluja D.(2016) A molecular beacon-based asymmetric PCR assay for easy visualization of amplicons in the diagnosis oftrichomoniasis. Biosens Bioelectron. 11;86:41-47. doi: 10.1016/j.bios.2016.06.025.

  25. 24. Sonkar SC, Wasnik K, Kumar A, Mittal P, Saluja D. (2016)Comparative analysis of syndromic and PCR-based diagnostic assay reveals misdiagnosis/ overtreatment for trichomoniasis based on subjective judgment in symptomatic patients.Infect Dis Poverty. 2016 May 5;5:42. doi: 10.1186/s40249-016-0133-x

  26. 23. Arora R, Sawney S, Saluja D. (2016)Potential Therapeutic Approaches for the Treatment of Acute Myeloid Leukemia with AML1-ETO Translocation.Curr Cancer Drug Targets.16(3):215-25.

  27. 22. Srivastava, K., Narang, R., Bhatia, J., & Saluja D., (2016) Expression of Heat Shock Protein 70 Gene and Its Correlation with Inflammatory Markers in Essential Hypertension.PLoS One11(3):e0151060

  28. 21. Sachdev, D., Patel, AL., Sonkar, SC., Kumari, I., & Saluja D., (2015) Diagnosis of Neisseria gonorrhoeae using molecular beacon.Biomed Res Int597432

  29. 20. Hasan, T., Ali, M., Saluja D., & Singh, LR.(2015) pH might play a role in regulating the function of paired amphipathic helices domains of human Sin3B by altering structure and thermodynamic stability.Biochemistry (Mosc)80(4):424-32

  30. 19. Chandra, S., Saluja D., Narang, R., Bhatia, J., &Srivastava, K., (2015)Atrial natriuretic peptide and aldosterone synthase gene in essential hypertension: a case-control study.Gene.567(1):92-

  31. 18. Mishra, A., Kumar, R., Tyagi, A., Kohaar, I., Hedau, S., Bharti, AC., Sarker, S., Dey, D., Saluja D., & Das, B., (2015)Curcumin modulates cellular AP-1, NF-kB, and HPV16 E6 proteins in oral cancer.Ecancermedicalscience9:525

  32. 17. Singh, S., Pandey, S., Bhatt, AN., Chaudhary, R., Bhuria, V., Kalra, N., Soni, R., Roy, BG., Saluja D., &Dwarakanath, BS., (2015)Chronic Dietary Administration of the Glycolytic Inhibitor 2-Deoxy-D-Glucose (2-DG) Inhibits the Growth of Implanted Ehrlich's Ascites Tumor in Mice.PLoS One.10(7):e0132089

  33. 16. Joon, D., Nimesh, M., & Saluja D., (2015) Loop-mediated isothermal amplification as alternative to PCR for the diagnosis of extra-pulmonary tuberculosis.Int J Tuberc Lung Dis.19(8):986-91

  34. 15. Kadamb, R., Mittal, S., Bansal, N., & Saluja D., (2015) Stress-mediated Sin3B activation leads to negative regulation of subset of p53 target genes.Biosci Rep 25;35(4)

  35. 14. Gupta, S., Kumar, P., Kaur, H., Sharma, N., Saluja D., Bharti, AC., Das, BC.,(2015). Selective participation of c-Jun with Fra-2/c-Fos promotes aggressive tumor phenotypes and poor prognosis in tongue cancer. Sci. report19;5:16811

  36. 13. Sawney, S., Arora, R., Aggarwal, K., K., & Saluja D., (2015) Esculetin Downregulates the Expression of AML1-ETO and C-Kit in Kasumi-1 Cell Line by Decreasing Half-Life of mRNA, J of Oncology, 8

  37. 12. Faiq, MA., Dada, R., Sharma, R., Saluja D., & Dada, T., (2014) CYP1B1: A Unique Gene with Unique Characteristics.Curr Drug Metab. 15(9): 893-914.

  38. 11. Faiq MA, Ali M, Dada T, Dada R, Saluja D. (2014) A novel methodology for enhanced and consistent heterologous expression of unmodified human cytochrome P450 1B1 (CYP1B1).PLoS One. 2014 Oct 16;9(10):e110473. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110473. eCollection 2014. PMID: 25329831

  39. 10. Chandra S, Narang R, Sreenivas V, Bhatia J, Saluja D, Srivastava K. (2014)Association of angiotensin II type 1 receptor (A1166C) gene polymorphism and its increased expression in essential hypertension: a case-control study.PLoS One. 2014 Jul 3;9(7):e101502. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0101502. eCollection 2014. PMID: 24992666

  40. 9. Patel AL, Mishra PK, Sachdev D, Chaudhary U, Patton DL, Saluja D. (2014)Seroprevalenceof antibodies against Pkn1, a novel potential immunogen, in Chlamydia trachomatis-infected Macacanemestrina and human patients.Biomed Res Int. 2014;2014:245483. doi: 10.1155/2014/245483. Epub 2014 Jun 18. PMID: 25032212

  41. 8. Nimesh M, Joon D, Varma-Basil M, Saluja D. (2014) Development and clinical evaluation of sdaA loop-mediated isothermal amplification assay for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis with an approach to prevent carryover contamination.J ClinMicrobiol. 2014 Jul;52(7):2662-4. doi: 10.1128/JCM. 00907-14. Epub 2014 Apr 30.PMID: 24789191

  42. 7. Nimesh M., joon, D., Pathak, A.K., Saluja D, (2013) Comparative study of diagnostic accuracy of established PCR assays and in-house developed sdaA PCR method for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in symptomatic patients with pulmonary tuberculosis J. of infection 67(5):399 – 407

  43. 6. Kadamb R, Mittal S, Bansal N, Batra H, Saluja D, (2013) Sin3: insight into its transcription regulatory functions. Eur J cell Biol. Aug- Sep; 92(8-9): 237 – 46.

  44. 5. Joshi R, Kumar A, Manral S, Sinha R, Arora S, Sharma A, Goel S, Kalra N, Chatterji S, Dwarkanath BS, Rawat DS, Depass AL, Rohil V, Saluja D, Parmar VS, Prasad AK, Raj HG. (2013) Calreticulin transacety lase mediated upregulation of thioredoxin by 7,8-diacetory-4-methylcoumarin enhances the antioxidant potential and the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Chem Biol Interact. 25:206 (2): 327-36.

  45. 4. Mishra PK, Sonkar SC, Raj SR, Chaudhry U, Saluja D (2013) Functional Analysis of Hypothetical Proteins of Chlamydia Trachomatis: A Bioinformatics Based Approach for Prioritizing the Targets. J Comput Sci Syst Biol 7: 010-014. doi:10.4172/jcsb.1000132

  46. 3. Kumari S, Chowdhury J, Mishra A.K , Chandna S, Saluja D, Chopra M. ChemBioChem Synthesis and Evaluation of a Fluorescent Non-Peptidic Cholecystokinin-B/Gastrin Receptor Specific Antagonist for Cancer Cell Imaging Volume 13, Issue 2, 23 January 2012, Pages 282-29

  47. 2.Srivastava K , Sundriyal R, Meena P.C., Bhatia J, Narang R, Saluja D. Association of angiotensin converting enzyme (insertion/deletion) gene polymorphism with essential hypertension in Northern Indian subjects Genetic Testing and Molecular Biomarkers Volume 16, Issue 3, 1 March 2012, Pages 174-177

  48. 1.Srivastava K, Chandra S. Bhatia J, Narang R, Saluja D, Association of angiotensinogen(M235T) gene polymorphism with blood pressure lowering response to angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor (Enalapril) Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Volume 15, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 399-406