From the current year 2009, the Lady Tata Memorial Trust has introduced a new award called the “Young Researcher Award” to recognize and reward young Indian scientists with outstanding track record in biological sciences, a deep commitment to find innovative solutions to major problems related to human diseases, and potential for high quality research.

The recipient of this 5-year Award will receive a monthly amount of Rs.10,000/- from the Trust, in addition to the regular salary received from the host Institute.  In addition, the Awardee will receive a contingency grant of Rs.5 lakhs per annum towards meeting the expenses on consumables, minor equipment, international and domestic, travel, manpower and other contingent expenditure to be incurred in connection with the implementation of the research project under the Fellowship.

The Trust invited applications from 120 leading scientific research institutions within the country and also advertised the Award in two leading national and international scientific journals.  In response a total of 29 applications were received in the inaugural year. The three-member Scrutiny Committee short-listed six applications for the interview as under :

The six applicants appeared for the interview before the Committee and made their project presentations, followed by a question and answer session.

The Interview Panel had mutually discussed and finalised the requisites, based on which each of the interviewees would be assessed, and unanimously agree on the following criteria for the selection of the deserving Awardee :

The Interview Panel, on completion of the interviews, jointly discussed and debated each of the applications, and based on the above criteria, unanimously proposed the research project of Dr. Suvendra Nath Bhattacharyya, aged 33, of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, entitled Co-regulation of gene expression by miRNA and AU-rich element binding protein HuR in mammalian cancer cells for the inaugural Young Researcher Award - 2009.

Dr. Bhattacharyya,  passed his M.Sc. degree in biochemistry from the University of Calcutta in 1998 and completed his Ph.D. studies in India in 2003.

For his Post-Doctoral research, Dr. Bhattacharyya moved to Basel, Switzerland and joined the laboratory of Prof. Witold Fillipowicz at Friedrich Miescher Institute in 2004, where till very recently he worked on the mechanism of microRNA (MiRNA) mediated gene regulation in mammalian cells.

In recognition of his research achievements during his post-doctoral period, he received the Career Development Award of International Human Frontier Science Program Organisation (France) in 2007 and recently, after starting his laboratory in the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, he has been selected as the International Senior Research Fellow of the Wellcome Trust, London.

The Young Researcher Award of the Trust will enable Dr. Bhattacharyya to concentrate on his future search to find the links between cellular MRNA dynamics and gene expression.  Since HuR is misregulated in human malignancies, the research carried also with human cancer cell lines, should contribute to the understanding of the regulatory role of miRNAs and HuR protein in human cancer.

The proposed research will also lead to the identification of new miRNA targets and MRNAs that are co-regulated by miRNAs and HuR in cancer cells.  In general, the proposed project should provide new information on the importance of post-transcriptional regulation in gene expression in cancer cells.