3 May 2023 – Siddhesh Kamat explores lipid signalling pathways for potential approaches to disease cures. Based at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, Siddhesh’s lab is trying to figure out not only the ways in which lipids are made or broken up in cells and the pathways they regulate in healthy cells in humans, but also what is going wrong with them in different diseases. “Signalling lipids are associated with a range of diseases from the nervous system to the immune system,” explains Kamat who grew up in a family of medical doctors and is fascinated by biomedical sciences.
His lab is one of the few in India working with mass spectrometry-based platforms in lipidomics, metabolomics and chemical proteomics. “The really cool thing about our lab is that people come with very different backgrounds and look at problems very differently,” he says with pride about his students who grew the lab’s work in different directions.
The EMBO Young Investigator Programme has helped Kamat sustain the salaries of students and support crucial experiments over the last two years. Constructive criticism from his interactions with scientists from the EMBO communities across Europe has been beneficial for embracing the new work his lab has started. “EMBO Young Investigators don’t need to be limited to their fields, because they will always find collaborators within the network,” he suggests to potential applicants to the EMBO Young Investigator Programme.
