Esha Madan
Dr. Madan has expertise and research experience in the field of transcriptional biology, cell signaling and molecular oncology. At a young age, Dr. Madan made seminal discoveries in area of cancer disease regulation, cell competition and identification of genetic-networks that regulate tumor-stroma interactions and can potentially impact clinical and translational outcomes. Dr. Madan has conducted research activities across Europe, USA, and Asia, with a track record of high impact publications in journals including Nature, Trends in Cancer, Nucleic acid Research, PNAS, Cancer Research, EMBO, JBC, and MCB. Importantly, she has established a strong network of collaborations with leaders in the field, to enable utilize the state-of-art technologies, for supporting her research. Dr. Madan’s objectives are directed towards a ground-breaking research area of identifying transcriptional signals and axis in combination with epigenetics, discovery of biomarkers, and effective therapeutic intervention for the benefit of cancer patients.
During the early years of the PhD tenure (2008), Dr. Madan made important discoveries and findings in identifying the mechanisms that regulate p53-dependent apoptosis and metabolism in cancer. She published 12 first author papers during her PhD term in high impact journals and trained herself in a variety of molecular biology, biochemistry, cell culture and tumor xenografting techniques. Her collaboration with OSU during PhD gave her an opportunity to work at the interface of cancer and cardiac disease models including studying the novel role of oxygen-p53 survival pathway in cardio-protection. Dr. Madan's post-doctoral program in Switzerland (2013), trained her in molecular biology, genomics, transcriptomics, and the basics of tumor host microenvironment interactions based on 'Flower' fitness fingerprint mark in cell competition pathway, which recently got published in Nature Journal in 2019. Her research efforts were responsible for the first ever discovery of human fitness fingerprint molecules in the form of Flower Win and Lose protein.
As an independent Visiting Faculty in Portugal, Dr. Madan’s interests have been engaged in identifying the key mechanisms that regulate the competition-based interactions between the tumor and the microenvironment. She recently joined as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery, VCU, where her team is uniquely poised for advancing the basic science research to clinics by effective usage of cancer disease models and human patient samples, instrumental in promoting immediate translational impact of the research findings.
