Work 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 QIMR Berghofer appointment

• 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

• 0000-0002-4118-6855
  

Researcher ID

• A-8526-2011

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.

Research Highlights

• 2014 – 2017: Member of Executive Council, Proteomics Society of India
• 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