IIT Roorkee confers Prof. Arun K. Shukla with Khosla National Award-2021 (Sciences)
Roorkee : Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee), honors Prof. Arun K. Shukla, IIT Kanpur with Khosla National Award-2021 (Sciences), at BSBE Department’s auditorium, IIT Roorkee. The award was presented by Prof. A. K. Chaturvedi, Director IIT Roorkee to celebrate Prof. Arun K. Shukla’s outstanding contributions in understanding structure, function and regulation of G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs).
Dr. Shukla received his Master’s (M.Sc.) in Biotechnology from the Center for Biotechnology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He then completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Membrane Biology at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany under the supervision of Prof. Hartmut Michel (Nobel Laureate, 1988). He did his post-doctoral research in USA with Profs. Bob Lefkowitz (Nobel Prize, 2012) and Brian Kobilka (Nobel Prize, 2012).Dr. Shukla is currently Joy Gill Chair Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at IIT Kanpur. His research program is focused on understanding the structure, function and regulation of G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs), the largest family of cell surface receptors in the human genome and the target of about half of the currently available medicines.
On conferring the award, Prof. Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director IIT Roorkee, said, “It gives me immense pleasure that Prof. Arun Kumar Shukla is the winner of the Khosla National Award of IIT Roorkee in the Science category. He is one of the brightest young scientists in the country who has made a mark at the national and international levels with his overarching research to understand the structure, function and regulation of the largest class of cell surface proteins in our body, the G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). This has direct implications for developing novel therapeutics against a range of human diseases with minimal side-effects.”.”
While elucidating the findings of the research, Prof. Arun K. Shukla, IIT Kanpur, highlighted, “These G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs)are intricately involved in almost every physiological process and approximately half of the currently prescribed medicines exert their therapeutic effects through these receptors. Our research has elucidated the details of how clinically prescribed drugs interact with the diseases and regulate the function of their cognate receptors in the human body. We have also discovered previously unappreciated mechanisms that GPCRs utilize to receive the information outside the cells and relay the message across the cell membrane. More recently, we have designed synthetic proteins such as antibody fragments that can be utilized to monitor GPCR activation and trafficking, and to rewire GPCR signaling in cellular context.”