Dr. Kalpana Luthra

Additional Professor

Room 3002, Dept of Biochemistry, PC Block, 3rd floor

Phone no. (Off) 011-26546431

Email: kalpanaluthra@gmail.com

 

Dr. Kalpana Luthra was awarded her Ph.D degree in Biochemistry in 2004 at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. She was appointed as faculty in AIIMS at the level of Assistant Professor in 1998 and is presently an Additional Professor in the department. She worked in the Molecular Biology laboratory of Institute for Medical Biology & Human Genetics, University of Innsbruck, Austria, on the genomic polymorphism of lipoprotein (a), for 3 months in 1997. She was a recipient of the Fogarty fellowship in 2002 and availed  training on the immunological and molecular characterization of HIV-1, at the New York University School of Medicine, New York, under the Fogarty AIDS and Tuberculosis International Training and Research Program. She was a recipient of the FAIMER (Foundation of Advanced International Medical Education and Research) fellowship in year 2006. She was awarded the Shakuntala Amir Chand Prize awarded by ICMR for the year 2003. She received Dr. P.S Murthy best paper award in 2004. She is a life member of the Indian Immunology Society and Association of the Clinical Biochemists of India (ACBI). The major focus of her research is on the immunological and molecular characterization of  HIV-1 and to generate human monoclonal antibodies to HIV-1. Some of these antibodies are presently being characterized in the laboratory. Previously she has been extensively working on gene polymorphisms and their association with  lipid related disorders. She has salient contributions in these two major research areas; has 60 research paper publications and  6 chapters in books.

 

 

STUDENTS

i. MSc: Nil

ii. MD: Dr. S. S. Prakash & Dr. Dinesh

iii. PhD: Mukti Sharma, Raiees Ahmad Andrabi, Rajesh Kalra & Lubina Khan

 

TRAINING

Each year, I train 2 MBBS students who undertake summer research projects for the KVPY fellowship awarded by DST. Also provide summer short term training (3-6 months) to 3-4 PG students from different institutes in the country, each year.

 

EDUCATION

Actively involved in Medical Education programs (in house and National workshops, talks), organized and conducted by the Centre for Medical Education and Technology (CMET) at AIIMS.

 

RESEARCH & IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS

a. Research interests –

1.      Immunological and molecular characterization of HIV-1: Her group is generating human monoclonal antibodies to HIV-1 from Indian HIV-1 infected patients and is in the process of characterizing these antibodies.

2.      Genetic basis of obesity and insulin resistance: SNP analysis of the candidate genes and their association with lipid, biochemical and anthropometric parameters and identified apo E as an independent genetic risk factor for Alzeimer’s disease and premature myocardial infarction. Recently, for the first time in Asian Indians, they have shown the association of a variant of the LMNA gene with obesity (Clin Endocrinology, 2011).

 

b. Important Publications –

1.   Prakash SS­, Chaudhary AK, Lodha R, Kabra SK, Vajpayee M, Hazarika A, Bagga B, Luthra K. Efficient neutralization of primary isolates by the plasma from HIV-1 infected Indian children. Accepted for publication in Viral immunology 2011 (in press).

2.   Andrabi R, Choudhary AK, Bala M, Kalra R, Prakash SS, Pandey RM, Luthra K. Relative reactivity of HIV-1 polyclonal plasma antibodies directed to V3 and MPER regions suggests immunodominance of V3 over MPER and dependence of high anti-V3 antibody titers on virus persistence. Arch Virol. 2011 Jul 7. [Epub ahead of print]

3.   Sharma M, Misra A, Vikram N, Suryaprakash B, Chhabra S, Garg N, Pandey RM, Upadhyay AD, Luthra K. Genotype of the LMNA 1908C>T variant is associated with generalized obesity in Asian Indians in North India. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2011 May 20. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2265.2011.04111.x. [Epub ahead of print]

4.   Meena K, Misra A, Vikram N, Ali S, Pandey RM, Luthra K. Cholesterol ester transfer protein and apolipoprotein E gene polymorphisms in hyperlipidemic Asian Indians in North India. Mol Cell Biochem. 2011 Jun;352(1-2):189-96. Epub 2011 Mar 6.

5.   Anoop S, Misra A, Meena K, Luthra K. Apolipoprotein E polymorphism in cerebrovascular & coronary heart diseases. Indian J Med Res. 2010 Oct;132:363-78. Review.

6.   Shubhasree Dutta Choudhury, Alok K. Chaudhury, Rajesh Kalra, Raiees Andrabi, Naveet Wig, Ashutosh Biswas, Manju Bala, Kalpana Luthra. Antiretroviral drug resistance mutations in the reverse transcriptase gene of HIV-1 isolates from Northern Indian patients: a follow-up study. Arch Virol. 2010 Apr;155(4):563-9. Epub 2010 Feb 24.

7.   Tripathi V, Verma R, Dinda A, Malhotra N, Kaur J, Luthra K. Differential expression of RDC1/CXCR7 in the human placenta. J Clin Immunol. 2009 May;29(3):379-86.

8.   Chaudhary O, Rajsekar K, Ahmed I, Verma R, Bala M, Bhasin R, Luthra K. Polymorphic variants in DC-SIGN, DC-SIGNR and SDF-1 in high risk seronegative and HIV-1 patients in Northern Asian Indians. J Clin Virol. 2008 Oct;43(2):196-201.

9.   Chaudhary O, Bhasin R, Luthra K. DC-SIGN and DC-SIGNR polymorphic variants in Northern Asian Indians. Int J Immunogenet. 2008 Dec;35(6):475-9.

10. Verma R, Gupta RB, Singh K, Bhasin R, Anand Shukla A, Chauhan SS, Luthra K. Distribution of CCR5delta32, CCR2-64I and SDF1-3'A and plasma levels of SDF-1 in HIV-1 seronegative North Indians. J Clin Virol. 2007 Mar;38(3):198-203.