ORCID ID, Scopus ID, Vidwan-ID: 216953, ResearchGate, Google Scholar

Email: pradip.dey@visva-bharati.ac.in; pradipdey.chem@gmail.com

Work Experience:

Tenure	Position Held/Holding
07/2021 – Present	Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Siksha Bhavana, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, Birbhum, West Bengal, India.
01/2020-05/2021	Post-doctoral Fellow under the mentorship of Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro at Tel Aviv University, Israel.
04/2017 – 12/2019	Post-doctoral Fellow under the mentorship of Prof. Suhrit Ghosh at IACS Kolkata, India.
11/2015 – 03/2017	Post-doctoral Fellow under the mentorship of Prof. Rainer Haag at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
09/2014-10/2014	Visiting project student during Ph.D., Montréal Neurological Institute and Hospital, McGill University, Canada Supervisor: Dr. Timothy E Kennedy

Education:

Degree	University/ Institution
Ph. D. (2010-15)	Freie Universität Berlin, Germany; Supervisor: Prof. Rainer Haag Thesis Title: Polyglycerol Based Hydrogels for the Immobilization of Catalytically Active Enzymes and as Scaffolds for Cells (Link to thesis)
M. Sc. in Chemistry (2008-10)	Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, India; Project Supervisor: Professor Parimal K. Bharadwaj
B. Sc. in Chemistry (Honors, 2005-08)	Presidency College (affiliated with the University of Calcutta), India

Area of Research

My research interest lies at the interface of chemistry and biology to target cancer and infectious diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, Covid-19, etc., using nanomedicine and developing biodegradable 3D-printable hydro/microgels for type 1 diabetes and tissue engineering applications. Basically, I am focused on the following fundamental and interdisciplinary projects where various macromolecular architectures ranging from linear, hyperbranched, dendronized linear, brush polymer, nano and microgels, etc., will be utilized for biomedical applications.

• Polymeric Microgels as Reservoir of Islet Cells for Sustain Release of Insulin
• Reactive Oxygen Species Responsive Amphiphilic Polymers for Drug Delivery
• Design and Development of Homogeneous Dendronized Polymeric Hydrogels for 3D bioprinting of Organoids

Five Key Publications:

1. P. Rajdev, P. Dey,^# I. Ghosh,^# R. Khamrui, J. Kar, S. S. Jana, and S. Ghosh, Shape-Dependent Cellular Uptake of Nanostructures Produced from Supramolecular Structure-Directing Unit-Appended Hydrophilic Polymers, ACS Macro Letters, 2021, 10, 1467–1473 (Link).
2. P. Dey, P. Rajdev, P. Pramanik, R. Haag, and S. Ghosh, Synthesis of Cylindrical Micelle from Hydrophilic Polymers Connected with a Single Supramolecular Structure-Directing Unit, Macromolecules, 2020, 53(16),7044-7052 (Link).
3. P. Dey,^# T. Bergmann,^# J. L. Cuellar-Camacho, S. Ehrmann, M. S. Chowdhury, M. Zhang, R. Haag, W. Azab, Multivalent Flexible-Nanogels Exhibit Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Activity by Blocking Virus Entry, ACS Nano, 2018, 12, 6429-6442 (Link).
4. P. Dey,^* S. Hemmati, and Rainer Haag,^*Hydrolytically Degradable, Dendritic Polyglycerol Sulfate based Injectable Hydrogels using Strain Promoted Azide-Alkyne Cycloaddition Reaction, Polym. Chem., 2016, 7, 375 (Link).
5. P. Dey, M. Adamovski, S. Friebe, A. Badalyan, R. Mutihac, F. Paulus, S. Leimkühler, U. Wollenberger, and R. Haag, Dendritic Polyglycerol−Poly(ethylene glycol)-Based Polymer Networks for Biosensing Application, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2014, 6, 8937 (Link).

^# Equally contributed, * Corresponding authors.

Research Projects:

Academic Achievements & Recognitions

• Recipient of Start-up research grant (SRG, 2022) by SCIENCE & ENGINEERING RESEARCH BOARD (SERB)
• Life member of CRSI
• Recipient of National Post-Doctoral Fellowship (N-PDF), SERB (April 2017 – March 2019)
• Recipient of Dahlem Research School (DRS) Honors (Post Doc) Fellowship, Freie Universität Berlin from July 2016 – March 2017
• Recipient of prestigious BIG NSE scholarship (Berlin International Graduate School for Natural Sciences and Engineering) from the cluster of excellence UniCat (Technical University Berlin) for carrying out Ph. D at the universities in Berlin (October 2010 – September 2013)
• Qualified GATE 2009 (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering)
• Qualified CSIR-NET (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research–National Eligibility Test) (December 2009) examination and invited for SPM fellowship (Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Fellowship) interview
• Recipient of Merit-cum-Means (MCM) scholarship (2008-10) from Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.) Kanpur
• Qualified JAM 2008 (Joint Admission Test for M.Sc.) conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.)
• Recipient of National Merit Scholarship (2003-2005) from West Bengal Board of Secondary Education

Contributed/ Invited Presentations

• Symposium on Polymer Science (SPS 2023) organized by Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata, West Bengal, India ( 17-18th November 2023), A Journey of Polyglycerol Sulfates from Tissue Engineering to Virus Inhibition and Targeted Drug Delivery (Invited Lecture)
• 16^th International Conference on “Polymer Science and Technology of Polymers and Advanced Materials through Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Industry (SPSI MACRO-2022)” organized by CSIR-NCL, IISER-P and SPPU in Pune, India, (2^nd – 4^th November 2022) on “Co-delivery of BRAF and MEK Inhibitors using P-selectin-targeted PLGA-PEG Nanoparticles for the Treatment of Melanoma” (Flash Poster Presentation)
• APSRT 2019 on “Advances in Polymer Science & Rubber Technology; Vision 2030” organized by Rubber Technology Center, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India (24-27th September 2019), Entropy Driven Precision Assembly of Engineered Amphiphilic Macromolecules and their Uptake in Cancer Cells
• Indo-German Workshop on “Multivalent Architectures for Biomedical Applications” organized by Department of Chemistry, University of Delhi, Delhi, India (5-6th April 2019), Entropy Driven Precision Assembly of Engineered Amphiphilic Macromolecules
• 15^th International Conference on Polymer Science and Technology 2018 (SPSI MACRO-2018), Pune, India (19-22 December), Dendritic Polyglycerol based Polyanionic Hydro-and Nanogels for Biomedical Applications
• International Dendrimer Symposium 2015 (IDS-9), Montreal, Canada (12-17 July), Dendritic Polyglycerolsulfate (dPGS) based Injectable Hydrogels for Cartilage Tissue Engineering
• European Polymer Federation (EPF) 2015, Dresden, Germany (21-26 June), Heparin mimetic dendritic polyglycerol sulfate based injectable hydrogels for cartilage tissue engineering
• Euro BioMAT 2015: European symposium and exhibition on biomaterials and related areas, Weimar, Germany (21-22 April), Heparin mimetic dendritic polyglycerol sulfate based injectable hydrogels for cartilage tissue engineering

Reviewer for Peer Reviewed Journals

• Adv. Functional Mater.
• Adv. Mater.
• Adv. Healthcare Mater
• ACS Applied Mater Interfaces
• Adv. Mater. Interfaces
• Biomacromolecules
• Journal of Macromolecular Science, Part A: Pure and Applied Chemistry
• Macromol. Biosci.
• RSC Advances
• Scientific Reports

Research Experience

Post-Doctoral Research:

Tel Aviv University                                                                                                   01/2020-05/2021

Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv, Israel.

Advisor: Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro

• Developed PLGA based nanoparticles for targeting P-selectin studied in a melanoma tumor model
• Developed in vitro brain tumor models studied in gelatin-based dynamic shear-thinning hydrogels

It resulted in a few co-authored publications in Science Advances (2024), Theranostics (2022), and  Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews (2021).

Indian Association for the Cultivation of Sciences (IACS)                                   04/2017 – 12/2019

School of Applied and Interdisciplinary Sciences, India.

Advisor: Prof. Suhrit Ghosh

I have developed amphiphilic polymers based on water-soluble monomers such as oligoglycerol dendrons to generate controlled supramolecular functional architectures in different shapes ranging from cylindrical micelles to polymersomes by the synergistic operation of H-bonding and π-stacking interaction and the intra and intermolecular H-bond mediated folding of polyurethanes. Following are the key achievements in the studies.

• The micellization of supramolecularly engineered amphiphilic macromolecules (SEAMs) is mainly governed by entropy. The mechanism of spherical to cylindrical micelles transformation (studied in SEAMs) was unfolded and these transformations could be speeded up by the addition of a good solvent for the hydrophobic block like THF.
• The cellular uptake behavior of these aggregates like polymersome, spherical micelles, and cylindrical micelles obtained from these SEAMs was different (Cellular internalization rate = Polymerosme> Spherical Micelle >> Cylindrical Micelle). Here, all the structures were obtained, just varying the one H-bonding unit, keeping the overall hydrophobic and hydrophilic content constant.

It resulted in a few shared first and co-authored publications in various reputed journals like Macromolecules (2020, 2018), Chemistry-An Asian Journal (2019), ACS Macro Letters (2021), ACS Applied Polymer Materials (2022), ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2023) and two reviews on disulfide-based nanostructures for drug delivery applications (Soft Matter, 2020) and controlled seeded supramolecular polymerization (Chem. Commun., 2020) as shared first author and one coauthor paper in Accounts of Chemical Research (2021) on supramolecularly engineered amphiphilic (macro)molecules and proteins. Part of the project was funded by the SERB national post-doctoral fellowship.

Freie Universität Berlin                                                                                           11/2015 – 03/2017

Institute for Chemistry and Biochemistry, Berlin, Germany.

Advisor: Prof. Rainer Haag

I developed the hyperbranched polyglycerol-based polymeric hydrogel particles on a controlled dimension (termed as “nanogel” and “microgel” when the dimension is in the nm and μm range, respectively) using different techniques such as nanoprecipitation, miniemulsion, and microfluidic templating.

• Developed sulfated flexible and rigid nanogels (NGs) based on dendritic polyglycerol sulfate (dPGS) in a size range of 100−200 nm to match the virus size using inverse nanoprecipitation technique by using two different types of spacers, i.e., dendritic and linear polyglycerols. The flexible NGs can adapt to the virus surface during the binding process, which leads to higher valent interactions and hence reduces the probability of detachment from the viral surface. Consequently, the effective concentrations (EC) with 50% inhibition of HSV-1 were found to be 90 and 164 μg/mL for flexible and rigid NGs studied in collaboration.
• Sulfated NGs were more uptaken by HUVEC and HeLa cells than the polyglycerol NGs (with hydroxyl groups). In collaboration, hydroxylated NGs were tested in a tuberculosis model, which showed that the NGs were mainly accumulated in the granuloma areas significantly more than in uninfected areas of Zebrafishes.

It resulted in a shared first-author paper and one co-authored paper, which were published in ACS Nano (2018). In addition, a few co-authored papers were published based on the work at FU Berlin in various reputed journals like Nature Communications (2019), Nano-Micro Letters (2021), ACS Nano (2018), ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2018), Biomacromolecules (2019 and 2018), Journal of Materials Chemistry B (2019), Advanced Materials Interfaces (2018), etc. The project was funded by DRS honors post-doctoral fellowship.

Ph. D. Student: Freie Universität Berlin                                                                01/2011 – 10/2015

Institute for Chemistry and Biochemistry, Berlin, Germany.

Advisor: Prof. Rainer Haag

I investigated new ways to form polyglycerol-based hydrogels using different biorthogonal crosslinking chemistry such as Cu-free strain-promoted azide-alkyne cycloaddition (SPAAC) reactions.

• Enzyme based biosensors were developed for the amperometric detection of benzaldehyde (concentration range 0.8-400 µM) where Periplasmatic aldehyde oxidoreductase (PaoABC) was entrapped in a dendritic polyglycerol-polyethylene glycol (dPG-PEG) based hydrogel film on the gold electrode. The biosensors performance was optimized by varying all the parameters like enzyme loading, pH, crosslinking density, and crosslinker lengths.
• Polyanionic hydrogels with different amount of dPGS content were developed to mimic the chondrocyte microenvironment using biorthogonal SPAAC reaction. Variation of dPGS content led to variation of the elastic moduli of the hydrogels in the range from 1-5 kPa. The efficiency of dPGS based hydrogels was evaluated as a cartilage tissue engineering scaffolds in collaboration by encapsulating the human chondrocytes during gelation. dPGS incorporated hydrogels had the highest cell viability after 21 days compared to the other controls (like pure PEG hydrogels, alginate hydrogels).
• A strained cyclooctyne terminated PEG-polycaprolactone linker was synthesized to introduce degradability in the dPGS hydrogels and cyclooctyne groups were introduced by employing a protection-deprotection strategy of strained cyclooctynes. Degradation study has shown that the dPGS containing hydrogels degraded at a slower rate compared to the PEG hydrogels in vitro.

These results were published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces (2014), Macromolecular Bioscience (2016), and Polymer Chemistry (2016), respectively. In the last project, I was a co-corresponding author and the Ph.D. fellowship was funded through the BIGNSE fellowship and Dahlem research school.