Staff Profile

Educational Qualification

M.Sc., Ph.D

Personal Statement

I am a tuberculosis researcher focused on drug discovery and the development of newer and adjunct therapeutic strategies to improve treatment outcomes. My work centers on understanding non-replicating persisters of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and integrating basic microbiology with pharmacodynamic analyses and to define critical drug concentrations of anti-TB drugs in clinical isolates of M. tb. I am also engaged in advancing phage-based approaches as both therapeutic interventions and rapid diagnostic tools for detecting viable bacilli.

Research Focus

• Non-replicating persister biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

• Pharmacodynamics and critical concentration determination of anti-TB drugs

• Adjunct and host-directed therapeutic strategies

• Drug resistance mechanisms and susceptibility testing

• Phage-based therapeutic interventions

• Luciferase reporter phage and phage-based diagnostic platforms

• Preclinical evaluation of anti-TB compounds

Ongoing projects as Principal investigator

• In-vitro and in-vivo evaluation of encapsulated mycobacteriophages D29 and TM4 as therapeutic candidates against Mycobacterium tuberculosis
• Pre-clinical evaluation of homeopathy drugs for treating drug sensitive and resistant isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis - Stage-I & Stage- II
• Role of Pharmacodynamics and non-replicating persisters in successful elimination of tubercle bacilli

Significant Publications

1. Drug resistance among extrapulmonary TB patients: Six years experience from a supranational reference laboratory. A Dusthackeer, G Sekar, S Chidambaram, V Kumar, P Mehta et al., Indian Journal of Medical Research 142 (5), 568-574. Citations: 64

2. Extrapulmonary tuberculosis—an update on the diagnosis, treatment and drug resistance. R Gopalaswamy, VNA Dusthackeer, S Kannayan, S Subbian. Journal of Respiration 1 (2), 141-164. Citations: 228

3. Construction and evaluation of luciferase reporter phages for the detection of active and non-replicating tubercle bacilli. A Dusthackeer, V Kumar, S Subbian, G Sivaramakrishnan, G Zhu, et al., Journal of Microbiological Methods 73 (1), 18-25. Citations: 53

4. Differential Culturability of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Culture-Negative Sputum of Patients With Pulmonary Tuberculosis and in a Simulated Model of Dormancy. A Dusthackeer, M Balasubramanian, G Shanmugam, S Priya, CR Nirmal, et al. Frontiers in Microbiology 10, 2381. Citations: 50

5. Characterization of temperate phage Che12 and construction of a new tool for diagnosis of tuberculosis. V Kumar, P Loganathan, G Sivaramakrishnan, J Kriakov, A Dusthackeer, et al., Tuberculosis 88 (6), 616-623. Citations: 49

Awards and Honours

• Awarded a Graduate Researcher position in Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York for a period of 9 months from June 2005 to Feb 2006

• Received Dr. C. Srinivasa Rao award for the best paper award on Tuberculosis by a young scientist from Tuberculosis Association of India for presenting a paper titled "Early diagnosis of tuberculosis by luciferase reporter phages" in NATCON 2009 held at Kolkata

• Was granted a partial travel grant by ICMR for poster presentation at SAARC Second Conference on TB, HIV/AIDS & Respiratory Diseases held on 15th - 18th December 2008 at Kathmandu, Nepal

• Awarded an ICMR-IIT Kharagpur MedTech internship for a period of eight weeks at IIT Kharagpur under the mentorship of Prof. Suman Chakraborty of Mechanical engineering department of IIT Kharagpur from 8th May to 3rd July 2016

• Awarded Rs. 2 lakh for developing the prototype for the proposed design titled "microfluidics in development of rapid TB diagnosis" under ICMR IIT Kharagpur Internship program from 1st November 2016 for a period of 9 months

• Awarded ICMR International fellowship at Loughborough University, UK at Chemical engineering department for working with Dr. Danish J Malik, Senior Lecturer from 1st October to 31st December, 2018 for a period of three months

• Was awarded the best poster presentation for the poster titled "Modulated Pro-inflammatory Immune Response and Factors of Tissue Damage in PBMCS Isolated from Tuberculosis Treatment Failures" at DPHICON2022 on 8th December, 2022

Research Profiles