Profile
The respiratory bacterial pathogen, Streptococcus pneumoniae colonizes the nasopharynx of healthy children and adults. Despite being a natural colonizer, S. pneumoniae also causes life-threatening diseases such as pneumonia, septicemia and meningitis worldwide and erythromycin-resistant pneumococci is classified as priority pathogen by the WHO in 2024. The overall goal of my laboratory is to understand the molecular mechanisms of pneumococcal infections and develop targeted therapeutics. A major focus of the lab is to characterize and study the role of host extracellular vesicles in the pathogenesis of bacterial infections. We will also engineer EVs with tailored cargo for precision medicine. A second aspect of our work focusses on drug repurposing strategy wherein we screen compounds to identify inhibitors targeting bacterial virulence factors as potential antimicrobials. Besides, we are also interested in understanding the bacterial adaptation and survival strategies with the host.
Current Focus Areas
1. Investigating the pathophysiological significance of host-derived extracellular vesicles during pneumococcal infections.
2. Targeting antimicrobial resistance by screening and identifying drugs targeting bacterial multiple virulence factors.
3. Investigating pneumococcal adaptation to intracellular survival within host immune cells
Selected Publications
Saba Parveen, Chinmayi V. Bhat, Aswathy C S, Shaheena Aziz, Arya J, Asmita Dutta, Somit Dutta, Sautan Show, Kuldeep Sharma, Sumit Rakshit, John Bernet Johnson, Upendra Nongthomba, Anirban Banerjee, Karthik Subramanian (2024). Bacterial pore forming toxin pneumolysin drives pathogenicity through host extracellular vesicles released during infection. iScience 2024. August 16; 27(8), 110589. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.110589.
Saba Parveen and Karthik Subramanian*. Emerging Roles of Extracellular Vesicles in Pneumococcal Infections: Immunomodulators to Potential Novel Vaccine Candidates. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2022 Feb 14;12:836070. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2022.836070.
Subramanian K, Neill DR, Malak HA, Spelmink L, Khandaker S, Dalla Libera Marchiori G, Dearing E, Kirby A, Yang M, Achour A, Nilvebrant J, Nygren P, Plant L, Kadioglu A, Henriques-Normark B. Pneumolysin binds to the mannose receptor C type 1 (MRC-1) leading to anti-inflammatory responses and enhanced pneumococcal survival. Nat Microbiol. 2019 Jan;4(1):62-70.
Subramanian K, Bergman P, Henriques-Normark B. Vitamin D promotes pneumococcal killing and modulates inflammatory response in primary human neutrophils. J Innate Immun. 2017;9(4):375-386.
Subramanian K, Henriques-Normark B, Normark S. Emerging concepts in the pathogenesis of Streptococcus pneumoniae: From nasopharyngeal colonizer to intracellular pathogen. Cell Microbiol. 2019 Nov;21(11):e13077 (Top Downloaded Paper, Wiley, 2018-2019)