Harsha Gowda
Associate Professor | Group Leader
+61 7 3362 0452harsha.gowda@qimrberghofer.edu.au
CAREER HISTORY
Associate Professor Harsha Gowda obtained his PhD at the Institute of Bioinformatics, Bangalore, India. During his Ph.D. he worked in Dr. Akhilesh Pandey’s laboratory at Johns Hopkins University (USA) on proteomic profiling of pancreatic cancers where his work involved proteomic approaches to study signalling pathways activated in pancreatic cancers and identification of novel biomarkers. In addition, he has worked as a visiting scientist in Dr. Gary Siuzdak’s laboratory at Scripps Center for Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry (USA). Before moving to QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in 2018, he worked as a faculty scientist at the Institute of Bioinformatics in India where he employed cutting-edge methods in genomics, proteomics and metabolomics to investigate molecular alterations associated with various diseases including cancers.
CURRENT APPOINTMENTS
2018-current: Group Leader, Cancer Precision Medicine
PREVIOUS APPOINTMENTS
2018-current: Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland
2018-current: National Health and Medical Research Council R.D. Wright Fellow
2010-2017: Faculty Scientist, Institute of Bioinformatics, India
2010-2015: Wellcome Trust/DBT Fellow, Institute of Bioinformatics, India
ORCID NUMBER
RESEARCHER ID
CURRENT AREA OF RESEARCH
Cancer Biomarkers and targets: Biomarkers are extremely useful to diagnose and monitor a disease. Most diseases including cancers can be effectively treated if diagnosed early. There is an urgent need for cancer biomarkers for risk assessment, early diagnosis, stratification of patients to determine appropriate therapy and to monitor treatment response. As molecular changes often precede disease manifestation, unbiased approaches to investigate molecular alterations associated with cancers can be a useful strategy to identify biomarkers and putative targets. We employ high-throughput methods including genomics and proteomics to identify potential biomarkers and putative targets for various cancers.
Drug resistance mechanisms: Drug resistance has limited the efficacy of almost all targeted therapeutic agents used to treat cancers. Although some of the most successful anti-cancer drugs to emerge in the last 2 decades are kinase inhibitors, they are invariably associated with relapse due to development of resistance during the course of treatment. Our group works on understanding drug resistance mechanisms in cancers by generating drug resistant clones by subjecting cancer cells susceptible for specific targeted therapeutic agents to selection pressure with appropriately chosen drug concentrations. We employ genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics approaches to characterize these resistant clones and understand drug resistance mechanisms. These resistance mechanisms could be targeted to achieve durable responses to cancer therapy.
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
2014-current: Proteomics Society of India
2012-current: Indian Association for Cancer Research
AWARDS RECOGNITION
2017: R. D. Wright Biomedical Career Development Fellowship, NHMRC, Australia
2016: Wellcome Trust/DBT Intermediate Fellowship
2015: Sir C.V. Raman Young Scientist State Award for the year 2013, Government of Karnataka, India
2010: Wellcome Trust/DBT Early Career Fellowship
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
2010: PhD., Institute of Bioinformatics, India/Johns Hopkins University, USA
2002: M.Sc. in Biotechnology, University of Mysore, India
2000: B.Sc. in Biochemistry, Botany, Microbiology, University of Mysore, India