{"id":131091,"date":"2017-11-06T11:32:51","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T16:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=131091"},"modified":"2017-11-07T08:10:30","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T13:10:30","slug":"raman-bahal-joins-pharmaceutical-sciences-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2017\/11\/raman-bahal-joins-pharmaceutical-sciences-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Raman Bahal Joins the Pharmaceutical Sciences Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word \u2018novel\u2019 comes up frequently in conversation with Raman Bahal, Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences. So does \u2018interdisciplinary.\u2019 But \u2018collaboration\u2019 probably wins the word count, because it\u2019s the concept that\u2019s nearest to his heart.<\/p>\n

\"Raman<\/a>
Raman Bahal, Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences. (Sheila Foran\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Listening to him talk \u2013 about his family in India and the subsequent academic journey that brought him to America \u2013 and it\u2019s obvious that this is not a scientist who wants to isolate himself in an ivory tower somewhere. It may sound trite, but Bahal is a genuine team player who measures success by the number of people he can count on as colleagues.<\/p>\n

A native of India, Bahal completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy at Punjabi University, Patiala, followed by a Master\u2019s in medicinal chemistry at the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Mohali.<\/p>\n

These early academic experiences first exposed him to the challenges inherent in drug discovery and development. But \u2013 because that\u2019s who he is \u2013 Bahal viewed these challenges more as opportunities than hurdles, and he set out to gain the knowledge that would enable him to make inroads in the treatment of a multitude of confounding diseases.<\/p>\n

As a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, he worked in the lab of Dr. Danith Ly whose pioneering work in developing Gamma PNA molecules that can enter cells and bind to certain parts of a genetic sequence \u2013 thus altering the flow of information \u2013 holds great promise for the inhibiting the spread of cancer cells.<\/p>\n

\u201cI joined Dr. Ly\u2019s lab as an organic chemist and then I received training in molecular biology and we collaborated with biological scientists at the University of Pittsburgh\u2019s medical center.\u00a0 The thing I discovered about science is that it\u2019s great to have an area of expertise, but unless you work in collaboration with others who have different strengths it\u2019s impossible to discover something novel,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Following his work with Ly, Bahal started a post doc at Yale University in the therapeutic radiology lab of Peter M.Glazer, MD, Ph.D., centered on gene therapy and gene targeting. \u201cPeter is a great mentor,\u201d Bahal says, \u201cand I was able to collaborate with a lot of people, including W. Mark Saltzman, Ph.D., founder of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Yale, as well as with other researchers looking at gene editing for cancer therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A paper on\u00a0in vivo<\/em> correction of anaemia in \u03b2-thalassemic mice, in which Bahal was a lead author, was published in the journal Nature Communications.<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 Another paper, on Micro RNA silencing for cancer therapy where he is second author, appeared in Nature<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, the former research was cited by the Washington Post<\/em> with the attention grabbing headline: New gene-editing trick discovered just in time for J-Lo\u2019s \u201dCRISPR\u201d TV Series<\/em>, as well as in multiple other media outlets.<\/p>\n

For Jose\u2032 Manautou, Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology, hiring Bahal is significant since it is the first since he became interim head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and thus something of a milestone.<\/p>\n

He cites Bahal\u2019s strong foundational knowledge in various core areas of research that are emphasized in the department, including pharmaceutics, medicinal chemistry, cancer biology, drug delivery, and pharmaceutical technology, as the reason he was asked to join the faculty.<\/p>\n

Manautou says, \u201cRaman is a methodical researcher with a strong record of producing innovative research work of great quality. He joined UConn with a grant for $200,000 from the Connecticut Innovations Regenerative Medicine Research Fund to study the gene editing of hematopoietic stem cells for treating sickle cell disease. He is the principal investigator of this grant that he received when he was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale.<\/p>\n

\u201cRaman\u2019s background and previous training in pharmacy is also a great asset that will serve him well in his role teaching in the professional pharmacy curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Bahal, he says that he\u2019s been equally impressed by the potential for scientific advancement in both industry and academia, but it was the opportunities presented by having his own research lab as well as the opportunity to work as a teacher and mentor that tilted the scales towards an academic career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that by having my own lab where I can work with students, I will have the freedom to develop novel therapies to fight disease. I look back on my time in New Haven when I would walk through Yale-New Haven Hospital and see people waiting for cancer as well as other treatments — sometimes the patients were in tears — and that image is such a strong motivator for me to turn towards scientific research that I felt compelled to choose this course.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to what made him interested in the position at UConn, he says that was the easy part of the decision making process. It is the University\u2019s commitment to interdisciplinary cooperation that made UConn stand out from the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cResearchers from the School of Pharmacy, UConn Health, and other areas all work together and they are doing amazing things in the field of drug discovery and development,\u201d he says. “And even though I\u2019ve only been here since the start of the semester I\u2019ve noticed how hard everyone works because they share the same goals.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s why I already feel at home at UConn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bahal lives with his wife, Anisha Gupta, Ph.D., a post-doc in the Department of Therapeutic Radiology at Yale and their two children in New Haven. On weekends, he can sometimes be found on the cricket field where he says he enjoys being part of a team. No surprise there!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raman Bahal brings a strong research background and an a knack for collaboration to his position as Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":131093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1935],"class_list":["post-131091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pharm"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-13 13:56:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/131093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131091"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=131091"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=131091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}