Debarata Banerjee Associate Professor UMDNJ-RWJMS Dept. of Pharmacology Cancer Institute of NJ. Rm 303 195 Little Albany Street New Brunswick. NJ 08901 Phone - (732) 235-6458 FAX - 8181 banerjed@umdnj.edu

Experimental therapeutics, drug resistance, molecular imaging, mesenchymal stem cells

The research interests of this laboratory include:

• understanding molecular changes that are associated with metastases of colorectal cancer and developing therapeutic strategies that exploit these changes
  
• developing non-invasive imaging techniques utilizing fluorescence. bioluminescence as well as positron emission tomographic techniques to visualize tumor response in vivo and
  
• studying the process of in vivo engraftment of bone marrow stem and progenitor cells following transplantation utilizing in vivo imaging techniques in living animals.

Selected Publications

Mishra PJ, Mishra PJ, Humeniuk R, Medina DJ, Alexe G, Mesirov JP, Ganesan S, Glod JW, Banerjee D. (2008) Carcinoma-associated fibroblast-like differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells. Cancer Res. 68(11):4331-9.

Yang R, Li WW, Hoang BH, Kim H, Banerjee D, Kheradpour A, Healey JH, Meyers PA, Bertino JR, Gorlick R. (2008) Quantitative correlation between promoter methylation and messenger RNA levels of the reduced folate carrier. BMC Cancer. 8:124.

Mishra PJ, Mishra PJ, Banerjee D, Bertino JR. (2008) MiRSNPs or MiR-polymorphisms, new players in microRNA mediated regulation of the cell: Introducing microRNA pharmacogenomics.
Cell Cycle. 7(7):853-8.

Bertino JR, Banerjee D, Mishra PJ. (2007) Pharmacogenomics of microRNA: a miRSNP towards individualized therapy. Pharmacogenomics. 8(12):1625-7.

Banerjee D, Glod J, Rabson AB. (2007) The Raz mTaz of human mesenchymal stem cells.
Stem Cells Dev. 16(5):691-3.

Tadi K, Ashok BT, Chen Y, Banerjee D, Wysocka-Skrzela B, Konopa J, Darzynkiewicz Z, Tiwari RK. (2007) Pre-clinical evaluation of 1-nitroacridine derived chemotherapeutic agent that has preferential cytotoxic activity towards prostate cancer. Cancer Biol Ther. 6(10):1632-7.

Mishra PJ, Humeniuk R, Mishra PJ, Longo-Sorbello GS, Banerjee D, Bertino JR. (2007) A miR-24 microRNA binding-site polymorphism in dihydrofolate reductase gene leads to methotrexate resistance. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 104(33):13513-8.

Picinich SC, Mishra PJ, Mishra PJ, Glod J, Banerjee D. (2007) The therapeutic potential of mesenchymal stem cells. Cell- & tissue-based therapy. Expert Opin Biol Ther. 7(7):965-73. Review.

Sharma M, Banerjee D, Garg PK. (2007) Characterization of newer subgroups of fulminant and subfulminant pancreatitis associated with a high early mortality. Am J Gastroenterol. 102(12):2688-95.

Ashok BT, Tadi K, Garikapaty VP, Chen Y, Huang Q, Banerjee D, Konopa J, Tiwari RK. (2007)
Preclinical toxicological examination of a putative prostate cancer-specific 4-methyl-1-nitroacridine derivative in rodents. Anticancer Drugs. 18(1):87-94.

Menon LG, Picinich S, Koneru R, Gao H, Lin SY, Koneru M, Mayer-Kuckuk P, Glod J, Banerjee D. (2007) Differential gene expression associated with migration of mesenchymal stem cells to conditioned medium from tumor cells or bone marrow cells. Stem Cells. 25(2):520-8.