Sankar Ghosh

Sankar Ghosh, Chairman and Silverstein and Hutt Family Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University, is a biochemist, immunologist and microbiologist. He has been at Columbia since 2008.

Ghosh’s seminal work has involved understanding the regulation of Nuclear Factor-kappa B (NF-kappa B / NF-kB), a transcription factor that plays a critical role in regulating the expression of a large number of genes involved in the mammalian immune system.

Because NF-kB plays an important role in regulating the expression of a number of genes involved in inflammation and the immune responses, his research has implications for the treatment of arthritis, colitis, dermatitis, asthma, and other inflammatory diseases, as well as diseases such as cancer and muscular dystrophy.

His research interests have expanded over the years and encompasses the study of long non-coding RNAs and microRNAs in the inflammatory process. His recent work has also illuminated novel mechanisms and pathways by which the NF-kB pathway influences immune responses to cancer.

Ghosh received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and carried out his postdoctoral research as an Irvington Institute postdoctoral fellow with Dr. David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute of MIT. Ghosh began his independent research career at Yale University School of Medicine, where he was also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.