Profile
I am a virologist and immunologist with over 20 years of experience in studying T-cell immunity to virus infection and vaccination. Trained at the Institute Pasteur and University Pierre and Maire Curie in Paris, France, my laboratory is dedicated to advancing virus immunology, focusing on understanding the development of long-term protective immunity to facilitate rational human vaccine design. Our research integrates viral immunology, antigen-specific immune profiling, single-cell genomics, and metabolomics to study T-cells, particularly “Tfh cells.” Using ex vivo Tfh-differentiation setups and mouse models, we mechanistically investigate the leads from human studies. Our work has provided valuable insights into immunological memory, offering significant potential for vaccine development. I have established the "Human Immune Monitoring and T-cell Assay" platform for advanced immunological human trials of vaccines and biotherapeutics and demonstrated its translational potential by conducting the immuno-bridging phase 3 clinical trial of intranasal COVID-19 vaccine.
Current Focus Areas
Understanding the T-cell determinants of long-lasting protective humoral immunity in longitudinal cohort of Japanese encephalitis infection and vaccination
Understanding the biology of Tfh cells in COVID-19 "Hybrid Immunity"
Studying the role of T cells in humoral immunity establishment to dengue virus
Understanding the biology of Tfh cells in mucosal protective immune responses.
Human Immune Monitoring and T-cell Assay Platform for the advanced immunological clinical trials of vaccines and biotherapeutics
Selected Publications
1. Vikkurthi R, Ansari A, Pai RA, Jha SN, Sachan S, Pandit S, Nikam B, Kalia A, Jit BP, Parray HA, Singh S, Kshetrapal P, Wadhwa N, Shrivastava T, Coshic P, Kumar S, Sharma P, Sharma N, Taneja J, Pandey AK, Sharma A, Thiruvengadam R, Grifoni A, Weiskopf D, Sette A, Bhatnagar S and Gupta N*. 2022. Inactivated virus vaccine BBV152/Covaxin elicits robust cellular immune memory to SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern. Nature Microbiology 7: 974-985.
2. Ansari A, Sachan S, Jit BP, Sharma A, Coshic P, Sette A, Weiskopf D, Gupta N*. 2022. An efficient immunoassay for B cell help function of SARS-CoV-2 specific memory CD4+ T cells. Cell Reports Methods 2 (6): 100224.
3. Ansari A, Arya R, Sachan S, Jha SN, Kalia A, Lall A, Sette A, Grifoni A, Weiskopf D, Coshic P, Sharma A, and Gupta N*. 2021. Immune memory in mild COVID-19 patients and unexposed donors reveals persistent T cell responses after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Frontiers in Immunology 12:636768.
4. Kalia A, Agrawal M and Gupta N*. 2020. CD8+ T cells are crucial for humoral immunity establishment by SA14-14-2 live attenuated Japanese encephalitis vaccine. European Journal of Immunology 51(2):368-379
5. Thiruvengadam R, Awasthi A, Medigeshi G, Bhattacharya S, Mani S, ….., Gupta N, Pandey AK, Bhattacharya J, Agrawal A, Vrati S, Bhatnagar S, Garg PK. 2022. Effectiveness of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 infection during the delta (B.1.617.2) variant surge in India: a test-negative, case-control study and a mechanistic study of post-vaccination immune responses. Lancet Infectious Diseases 22(4):473-482.