Gagandeep Kang

Last updated
Gagandeep Kang
FRS
Born (1962-11-03) November 3, 1962 (age 61)
Simla
Nationality Indian
Alma mater Christian Medical College, Vellore (MBBS, MD, PhD)
Awards Infosys Prize (2016)
Scientific career
Fields Infectious disease
Vaccines
Enteric infections
Water
Sanitation [1]
Institutions Christian Medical College, Vellore
Baylor College of Medicine
Translational Health Science and Technology Institute
Website cmcwtrl.in

Gagandeep Kang FRS [2] (born 3 November 1962) is an Indian microbiologist and virologist who has been leading the work on enteric diseases, diarrheal infections and disease surveillance at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 2023. [3]

Contents

Kang previously was the Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India [1] and from August 2016 to July 2020 was executive director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. [4] [5] [6] Her major research focus is on viral infections in children, and the testing of rotaviral vaccines. She also works on other enteric infections and their consequences when children are infected in early life, sanitation and water safety. She was awarded the prestigious Infosys Prize in Life Sciences in 2016 for her contributions to understanding the natural history of rotavirus and other infectious diseases. [4] [7] [8] In 2019, she became the first Indian woman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. [9] She was on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2020. [10]

Kang is co-author of book Till We Win: India's Fight Against The COVID-19 Pandemic , with Chandrakant Lahariya, a leading Indian medical doctor and Public policy and health system expert and Randeep Guleria, the director of AIIMS, New Delhi. The book has been published by India's leading publisher Penguin Random House India and has become an instant bestseller.

Early life and education

Gagandeep Kang was born in Shimla on 3 November 1962. [11] Her mother taught English and history and her father was a mechanical engineer in the Indian Railways. [11] Kang grew up moving around north and east India, changing schools 10 times. She practiced science frequently at home during her childhood, building a lab with her father at home when she was 12 and experimenting in biology, physics and chemistry. [12]

Kang completed her Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) in 1987 and her Doctor of Medicine (MD) in Microbiology in 1991 from Christian Medical College, Vellore and obtained her PhD in 1998. [4] She obtained her membership of the Royal College of Pathologists [ when? ] and carried out postdoctoral research with Mary K. Estes at the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston before returning to the Christian Medical College.

Career and research

Kang is a medical scientist who has worked on diarrhea diseases and public health in India since the early 1990s. She is a key contributor to rotavirus epidemiology and vaccinology in India. Focusing on vaccines, enteric infections and nutrition in young children in disadvantaged communities, she has combined field epidemiology with intensive laboratory investigations to inform both the science of infectious diseases and policy in India. Her comprehensive research on rotavirus has demonstrated the high burden of rotavirus disease across India, the genetic diversity of viruses, the lower protection from infection and vaccines and the exploration of several approaches to improve the performance of oral vaccines. Her work has led to her being described as India's "vaccine godmother". [12]

Kang has published over 300 scientific papers and is or was on editorial boards for several journals, including PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine and International Health. She is on many review committees for national and international research funding agencies, and has served on several advisory committees mainly related to vaccines, including India's National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, the WHO's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety and the Immunisation and Vaccine Implementation Research Advisory Committee. She chairs the WHO SEAR's Regional Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (2015–present). She has received honorary appointments as an associate faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland and adjunct professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. [13]

Kang played a significant role in the efforts that culminated in the development of Rotavac, a vaccine from Bharat Biotech that targets diarrhea. She was one of three principal investigators in the Phase III clinical trials of the vaccine. [14] Her initial interest was in identifying the correlates of protection against the rotavirus. She and others began by recreating a study conducted in Mexico to identify children protected from rotaviral infection, research the immune responses and isolate the correlate of protection. The recreated study itself did not succeed, but it did develop high quality laboratory methods for the detection of rotaviruses. Kang and one of her students subsequently established vaccine assays for rotavirus infections, used in testing Rotavac. [15]

Since 2020, Kang has been an ex-officio member of a working group on COVID-19 vaccines established by the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts at the WHO. [16] She was also involved in India’s drive to produce a coronavirus vaccine. [17]

Other activities

Recognition

Kang is the second Indian woman scientist to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 359 years of history of this scientific academy. [22] She was the ninth woman to be awarded the Infosys Prize. She is the first Indian and the first woman to edit Manson's Textbook of Tropical Medicine. [4] Other awards and honours include:

Related Research Articles

<i>Rotavirus</i> Specific genus of RNA viruses

Rotaviruses are the most common cause of diarrhoeal disease among infants and young children. Nearly every child in the world is infected with a rotavirus at least once by the age of five. Immunity develops with each infection, so subsequent infections are less severe. Adults are rarely affected. Rotavirus is a genus of double-stranded RNA viruses in the family Reoviridae. There are nine species of the genus, referred to as A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I and J. Rotavirus A is the most common species, and these rotaviruses cause more than 90% of rotavirus infections in humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canadian Institutes of Health Research</span> Canadian federal agency

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is a federal agency responsible for funding health and medical research in Canada. Comprising 13 institutes, it is the successor to the Medical Research Council of Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Awa Marie Coll-Seck</span> Senegalese infectious diseases specialist and politician

Awa Marie Coll-Seck is as Senegalese infectious diseases specialist and politician who served as Minister of Health of Senegal from 2001 to 2003 and again from 2012 to 2017. She also served as former Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership and is on the board of directors of several notable global health organizations. She is an agenda contributor of the World Economic Forum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susana López Charretón</span> Mexican virologist specialized in rotaviri (born 1957)

Susana López Charretón is a Mexican virologist specialized in understanding the mechanisms of infection of rotavirus. López Charretón has led a research program as principal investigator at the Biotechnology Institute (UNAM) in Cuernavaca, Mexico for over 25 years.

The rotavirus vaccine is a vaccine used to protect against rotavirus infections, which are the leading cause of severe diarrhea among young children. The vaccines prevent 15–34% of severe diarrhea in the developing world and 37–96% of the risk of death among young children due to severe diarrhea. Immunizing babies decreases rates of disease among older people and those who have not been immunized.

Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) is a vaccination programme launched by the Government of India in 1985. It became a part of Child Survival and Safe Motherhood Programme in 1992 and is currently one of the key areas under the National Health Mission since 2005. The programme now consists of vaccination for 12 diseases- tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, measles, hepatitis B, rotaviral gastroenteritis, Japanese encephalitis, rubella, pneumonia and Pneumococcal diseases. Hepatitis B and Pneumococcal diseases were added to the UIP in 2007 and 2017 respectively. The cost of all the vaccines are borne entirely by the Government of India and is funded through taxes with a budget of ₹7,234 crore (US$870 million) in 2022 and the program covers all residents of India, including foreign residents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soumya Swaminathan</span> Indian and WHO Deputy Director general

Soumya Swaminathan is an Indian paediatrician and clinical scientist known for her research on tuberculosis and HIV. From 2019 to 2022, she served as the chief scientist at the World Health Organization under the leadership of Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Previously, from October 2017 to March 2019, she was the Deputy Director General of Programmes (DDP) at the World Health Organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations</span> Public-private organization for vaccine development

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is a foundation that takes donations from public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations, to finance independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases (EID).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anita Zaidi</span> Pakistani physician

Anita Kaniz Mehdi Zaidi is a Pakistani physician. She is the President of the Gender Equality Division and Director of Vaccine Development, Global Health Surveillance, Diarrhea and Enteric Diseases at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She has previously served as Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health at the Aga Khan University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vaccination in India</span>

Vaccination in India includes the use of vaccines in Indian public health and the place of vaccines in Indian society, policy, and research.

Yvonne "Bonnie" Maldonado is an American physician, pediatrician, and Professor of Pediatrics and of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University, with a focus on Infectious Diseases. She founded Stanford's pediatric HIV Clinic and now serves as Stanford University School of Medicine's Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Diversity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia J. García</span> Peruvian professor

Patricia Jannet García Funegra is a Peruvian professor of public and global health at Cayetano Heredia University. She originally trained as a clinician before focusing on research and public health. Her work also focuses on reproductive health, sexually transmitted diseases, and medical informatics. In 2016-17 García was the Minister of Health of Peru. She was the first Peruvian to be elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bharat Biotech</span> Indian multinational biotechnology company and vaccine manufacturer

Bharat Biotech International Limited (BBIL) is an Indian multinational biotechnology company based in Hyderabad, which is engaged in drug discovery, drug development, and the manufacture of vaccines, biotherapeutics, pharmaceuticals and healthcare products.

Nicola Mary Turner is a New Zealand public health advocate who is a Professor at the University of Auckland and Medical Director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre, an organisation that advises the New Zealand medical profession and the New Zealand Government. She has contributed to advisory committees for the New Zealand Ministry of Health, is a spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Group and works in general practice. Much of her research and outreach has focused on improving immunisation coverage and closing equity gaps for the national schedule vaccine delivery in New Zealand and she has commented publicly on these issues during COVID-19 in New Zealand.

Helen Aspasia Petousis-Harris is a New Zealand vaccinologist and associate professor in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care at the University of Auckland. She has been involved in research related to vaccination in New Zealand since 1998, with her main areas of focus being vaccine safety and effectiveness. Petousis-Harris has had a variety of lead roles in New Zealand and international organisations that focus on vaccination and is a regular media spokesperson in this field, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shabir Madhi</span> South African physician and professor

Shabir Ahmed Madhi, is a South African physician who is professor of vaccinology and director of the South African Medical Research Council Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, and National Research Foundation/Department of Science and Technology Research Chair in Vaccine Preventable Diseases. In January 2021, he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Penny M. Heaton is an American physician who is the Global Therapeutics Lead for Vaccines at Johnson & Johnson. She previously worked at Novavax, Novartis and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She was included by Stat News on their definitive list of leaders in the life sciences in 2022.

Julie Bines, is a clinician and researcher working in Melbourne, Australia. Alongside being a professor and deputy head of the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne, she is also a paediatric gastroenterologist at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne and is the leader of the Enteric Diseases group at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. Bines is the joint head of the WHO Collaborative Centre for Child Health and founding member of Women in Global Health Australia.

Pragya D. Yadav is an Indian scientist at the ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV), who is known for her research contributions in the field of communicable diseases and highly pathogenic viral infections, such as Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), Nipah, Ebola, leading to improvising national public health surveillance policy for interventions and management. Yadav is among the scientists who detected the first three COVID-19 pandemic cases in India. She headed the team that developed Covaxin, the first indigenous COVID-19 vaccine in India

Minnie Mariam Mathan is a pathologist, a pioneer in India in gastrointestinal ultrastructure research and medical administrator. She pioneered studies in the pathogenesis of intestinal lesions in tropical sprue and of the rotavirus as an important cause of acute diarrhea in Indian children.

References

  1. 1 2 Gagandeep Kang publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  2. 1 2 "Gagandeep Kang - Royal Society". Royalsociety.org. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  3. ↑ E Kumar Sharma (15 November 2022), India’s ace virologist Dr Gagandeep Kang to join Gates foundation as director, global health The Financial Express .
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Infosys Prize - Laureates 2016 - Prof. Gagandeep Kang". Infosys-science-foundation.com. Retrieved 2018-01-20.
  5. ↑ "Professor Gagandeep Kang : Hic Vac". www.hic-vac.org. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  6. ↑ Raghavan, Prabha (7 July 2020). "Gagandeep Kang, vaccine scientist, quits top research institute". The Indian Express. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  7. ↑ Barath, Harini (7 March 2017). "10 women, 10 questions: Gagandeep Kang". IndiaBioscience.org. Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  8. ↑ "An E-mail Interview with Prof. Gagandeep Kang". Tropical Parasitology. 7 (2): 128–130. 1 July 2017. doi: 10.4103/tp.TP_30_17 (inactive 31 January 2024). PMC   5652053 . PMID   29114495 . Retrieved 23 April 2019.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2024 (link)
  9. ↑ "Gagandeep Kang becomes first Indian woman to be elected Royal Society Fellow". The Hindu. 2019-04-19. ISSN   0971-751X . Retrieved 2019-10-02.
  10. ↑ "Infosys Prize - Jury 2020". www.infosys-science-foundation.com. Retrieved 2020-12-10.
  11. 1 2 Ramesh, Sandhya (24 April 2019). "Meet Gagandeep Kang, Shimla scientist who's helping save lives of thousands of Indian kids". ThePrint. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
  12. 1 2 Mohan, Shriya. "'Stick it out and make good friends'". @businessline. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
  13. ↑ "Gagandeep Kang". Rota Council. Retrieved 2019-10-02.
  14. ↑ "Rotavirus Vaccine Developed in India Demonstrates Strong Efficacy" (PDF). BharatBiotech.com. 2013-05-14. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  15. ↑ "My best collaborators are women, says Gagandeep Kang". TheHindu.com. 2019-04-26. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  16. ↑ SAGE Working Group on Covid-19 vaccines World Health Organization (WHO).
  17. ↑ Amy Kazmin (29 January 2021), India: has the Covid pandemic started to burn itself out? Financial Times .
  18. ↑ Global Health Centre International Advisory Board Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, press release of April 20, 2020.
  19. ↑ Hannah Kuchler (19 January 2022), Bill Gates warns of pandemics potentially far worse than Covid Financial Times .
  20. ↑ CEPI Board membership updates Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), press release of 5 April 2023.
  21. ↑ Global Health Scientific Advisory Committee Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
  22. 1 2 "Gagandeep Kang enters Royal Society of London as first Indian woman scientist fellow - Times of India". The Times of India . Retrieved 23 April 2019.
  23. 1 2 3 "Translational Health Science and Technology Institute". thsti.res.in. Retrieved 2019-07-02.
  24. ↑ "Winners of Infosys Prize 2016 announced". Livemint.com/. 2016-11-18. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  25. ↑ Canada Gairdner Global Health Award 2024
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.