The outcome of viral infection is primarily driven by the immune cells that interact with the viruses and elicit an immune response. Dengue (DV) and Japanese Encephalitis virus (JEV) infection cause notable morbidity and mortality and are recognized as important pathogens in India. However, it is not clear what molecular triggers cause severity. The immunopathogenic mechanisms that drive disease progression are ill-understood. Virus infection modulates the microenvironment leading to phenotypic and functional changes in the immune cells and altering disease outcomes. However, there is a lack of in-depth knowledge of the phenotypic heterogeneity of immune cells due to viral infection. How virus-induced phenotypic changes are related to cell-fate decisions in the immune response and impart adverse disease outcomes. Thus, we have undertaken multiple projects to decipher the mechanisms of immune modulation at the cellular and molecular levels. To understand complex interactions between viruses and hosts, we have taken an integrated ‘omics’ approach extracting molecular information from clinical samples, followed by validation and mechanism study using cellular or animal models. Our work encompasses studying the impact of viral infection on immune cell phenotypes and functions.

Infected cells also secrete factors (e.g., small RNA, proteins) by releasing small extracellular vesicles called exosomes. These exosomes circulate in the body fluid and may alter cellular functions upon transferring their materials into the neighboring or distant cells. We believe that circulating exosomes may have the capacity to modulate immune functions, and aberrant immune function may play an important role in dengue disease progression. Ongoing work also evaluates the circulating exosomes purified from patients' plasma for their ability to induce immune dysfunction and their association with disease severity.

• Dr Shweta Duggal
  Research Associate-II
  shweta.duggal@rcb.res.in
• Dr. Aarti Tripathi
  DST-SERB Senior Research Fellow
  aartitripathi89@gmail.com
• Surender Rawat
  DBT-Senior Research Fellow
  surender.rawat@rcb.res.in
• Jaya Saini
  DBT-Senior Research Fellow
  jaya@rcb.res.in
• Sharda Kumari
  UGC-Senior Research Fellow
  sharda.kumari@rcb.res.in
• Rohit Soni
  CSIR-Junior Research Fellow
  rohit.soni@rcb.res.in
• Naina Soni
  ICMR-Senior Research Fellow
  naina.soni@rcb.res.in
• Shubham Kumar
  MSC student
  shubham.kumar@rcb.res.in

• Received fellowship from ‘Viral Hepatitis Research Foundation of Japan’ in 2005 & 2011

1. Soni N, Gupta S, Rawat S, Krishnakumar V, Mohanty S, Banerjee A. MicroRNA-Enriched Exosomes from Different Sources of Mesenchymal Stem Cells Can Differentially Modulate Functions of Immune Cells and Neurogenesis. Biomedicines 2021, 10(1) DOI: 10.3390/biomedicines10010069
2. Gupta S; Vishal P; Sharma H; Soni N; Rao EP; Dalela M; Yadav A; Nautiyal N; Kumar A; Nayak B; Banerjee A; Dinda AK; Mohanty S. Comparative Evaluation of Anti-Fibrotic Effect of Tissue Specific Mesenchymal Stem Cells Derived Extracellular Vesicles for the Amelioration of CCl4 Induced Chronic Liver Injury. Stem Cell Rev Rep. 2021 Dec 2. doi: 10.1007/s12015-021-10313-9.
3. Sharma KB, Chhabra S, Aggarwal S, Tripathi A, Banerjee A, Yadav AK, Vrati S, Kalia M. Proteomic landscape of Japanese encephalitis virus-infected fibroblasts. J Gen Virol. 2021 Sep;102(9). doi: 10.1099/jgv.0.001657. PMID: 34546869.
4. Tripathi A, Banerjee A. Vrati S. Development and Characterization of a Robust Animal Model of Japanese Encephalitis Virus Infection in Adolescent C57BL/6 Mice. Dis Model Mech. 2021 Oct 1;14(10):dmm049176. doi: 10.1242/dmm.049176.
5. Tripathi A, Shing B, Addya S, Surjit M, Kumar P, Vrati S, Banerjee A. Lack of Interferon 1 Regulatory Factor 8 Restricted IFN-gamma Response and Augmented Japanese Encephalitis Virus Replication in the Mouse Brain. J Virol. 2021 Oct 13;95(21):e0040621. doi:10.1128/JVI.00406-21.
6. Rawat S, Vrati S, Banerjee A. Neutrophils at the crossroads of acute viral infections and severity. Mol Aspects Med. 2021. Oct;81:100996. doi: 10.1016/j.mam.2021.100996 PMID: 34284874
7. Banerjee A, Tripathi A, Duggal S, Banerjee A, Vrati S. Dengue virus infection impedes megakaryopoiesis in MEG-01 cells where the virus envelope protein interacts with the transcription factor TAL-1. Sci Rep. 2020 Nov 11;10(1):19587. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-76350-5.
8. Saini J, Bandyopadhyay B, Pandey AD, Ramachandran VG, Das S, Sood V, Banerjee A, Vrati S. High-Throughput RNA Sequencing Analysis of Plasma Samples Reveals Circulating microRNA Signatures with Biomarker Potential in Dengue Disease Progression. mSystems. 2020 Sep 15;5(5):e00724-20. doi: 10.1128/mSystems.00724-20. PMID: 32934118
9. Banerjee A, Tripathi A. Recent advances in understanding Japanese encephalitis. F1000Res. 2019 Nov 13;8:F1000 Faculty Rev-1915. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.19693.1. eCollection 2019. PMID: 31781366
10. Mukherjee S, Akbar I, Kumari B, Vrati S, Basu A, Banerjee A. Japanese Encephalitis Virus-induced let-7a/b interacted with the NOTCH-TLR7 pathway in microglia and facilitated neuronal death via caspase activation. J Neurochem. 2019 May;149(4):518-534. doi: 10.1111/jnc.14645. Epub 2019 Jan 31. PMID: 30556910
11. Sharma H, Tripathi A, Kumari B, Vrati S, Banerjee A. Artificial MicroRNA-Mediated Inhibition of Japanese Encephalitis Virus Replication in Neuronal Cells. Nucleic Acid Ther. 2018 Dec;28(6):357-365. doi: 10.1089/nat.2018.0743. Epub 2018 Nov 20. PMID:30457923
12. Pandey AD, Goswami S, Shukla S, Das S, Ghosal S, Pal M, Bandyopadhyay B, Ramachandran V, Basu N, Sood V, Pandey P, Chakrabarti J, Vrati S, Banerjee A. Correlation of altered expression of a long non-coding RNA, NEAT1, in peripheral blood mononuclear cells with dengue disease progression. J Infect. 2017 Oct 12. pii: S0163-4453(17)30308-0. doi: 10.1016/j.jinf.2017.09.016. PMID:29031635
13. Banerjee A, Shukla S, Pandey AD, Goswami S, Bandyopadhyay B, Ramachandran V, Das S, Malhotra A, Agarwal A, Adhikari S, Rahman M, Chatterjee S, Bhattacharya N, Basu N, Pandey P, Sood V, Vrati S, RNA-Seq analysis of peripheral blood mononuclear cells reveals unique transcriptional signatures associated with disease progression in dengue patients, Transl Res. 2017 Aug;186:62-78.e9. doi: 10.1016/j.trsl.2017.06.007. Epub 2017 Jun 17. PMID:28683259.
14. Kumari B, Jain P, Das S, Ghosal S, Hazra B, Trivedi AC, Basu A, Chakrabarti J, Vrati S, Banerjee A. Dynamic changes in global microRNAome and transcriptome reveal complex miRNA-mRNA regulated host response to Japanese Encephalitis Virus in microglial cells. Scientific Reports 2016 Feb 3;6:20263. doi: 10.1038/srep20263. PMID:26838068 Cited by 2
15. Goswami S, Banerjee A, Kumari B, Bandyopadhyay B, Bhattacharya N, Basu N, Vrati S, Arup Banerjee. Differential expression and significance of circulating microRNAs in cerebrospinal fluid of acute encephalitis patients infected with Japanese Encephalitis Virus. Molecular Neurobiology 2016. PMID: 26860411 PMID: 26860411, DOI: 10.1007/s12035-016-9764-y
16. Sarkar N, Panigrahi R, Pal A, Biswas A, Singh SP, Kar S, Bandyopadhyay M, Das D, Saha D, Kanda T, Sugiyama M, Chakrabarti S, Banerjee A , Chakravarty R. Expression of microRNA-155 correlates positively with the expression of Toll-Like Receptor 7 and modulates Hepatitis B Virus via C/EBP-β in Hepatocytes. J Viral Hepatitis 2015 Oct;22(10):817-27. Cited by: 7
17. Pareek S, Roy S, Kumari B, Jain P, Banerjee A, Vrati S. miR-155 induction in microglial cells suppresses Japanese encephalitis virus replication and negatively modulates innate immune responses. J Neuroinflammation. 2014 May 29;11(1):97. PMID: 24885259, DOI 10.1186/1742-2094-11-97 Cited by: 19
18. Bandyopadhyay M, Banerjee A, Sarkar N, Panigrahi R, Datta S, Pal A, Singh SP, Biswas A, Chakrabarti S, Chakravarty R. Tumor suppressor micro RNA miR-145 and on micro RNAs miR-21 and miR-222 expressions are differentially modulated by hepatitis B virus X protein in malignant hepatocytes. BMC Cancer. 2014 Sep 26;14:721. Cited by: 13
19. Banerjee A, Mazumdar B, Meyer K, Di Bisceglie AM, Ray RB, Ray R. Transcriptional repression of C4 complement by hepatitis C virus proteins. J Virol. 2011; 85:4157-66. Cited by: 25 doi: 10.1128/JVI.02449-10.
20. Banerjee A, Meyer K, Mazumdar B, Ray RB, Ray R. Hepatitis C virus differentially modulates activation of forkhead transcription factors and insulin-induced metabolic gene expression. J Virol. 2010,84:5936-46. Cited by: 32. doi: 10.1128/JVI.02344-09
21. Ait-Goughoulte M, Banerjee A, Meyer K, Mazumdar B, Ray RB, Ray R. Hepatitis C virus core protein interacts with fibrinogen-β and attenuates cytokine stimulated acute phase response. Hepatology 2010,51:1505-13. Cited by: 25
22. Ray R, Meyer k, Banerjee A, Basu A, Houghton M, Frey S, and Belshe RB. Characterization of antibodies induced by vaccination with hepatitis C virus envelope glycoproteins. J Infect Dis. 2010,202:862-6. Cited by: 47
23. Banerjee A, Saito K, Meyer K, Banerjee S, Ait-Goughoulte M, Ray RB, Ray R. Hepatitis C Virus Core Protein and Cellular Protein HAX-1 Promotes 5-Fluorouracil Mediated Hepatocyte Growth Inhibition. J Virol. 2009;83:9663-71. Cited by: 21
24. Banerjee A, Kurvanob F, Datta S, Chandra PK, Tanaka Y, Mizokami M, Bhattacharya SK, Chakravarty R. Phylogenetic relatedness and genetic diversity of HBV genotype strain isolated from Eastern India. J Med Virol. 2006;78:1164-74. Cited by: 108. 10.1002/jmv.20677
25. Datta S, Banerjee A, Chandra PK, Mahapatra PK, Chakrabarti S, Chakravarty R. Drug trafficking routes and hepatitis B in injection drug users, Manipur, India. Emerg Infect Dis. 2006;12: 1954-7.Cited by: 19