Sumit Chanda

Sumit K. Chanda is an American research scientist who works on viral and immunological human diseases. He also led the team that built and deployed Metascape for the analysis of omics data. This tool attracts over 500,000 users per year and has been cited 2,000 times a year since its inception in 2019.

Early life and education
Chanda earned his B.Sc. in biology at Cornell University and his Ph.D. in molecular pharmacology at Stanford University. He completed his postdoctoral training at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, where he pioneered high-throughput approaches for target identification and validation that enabled preclinical development of novel therapeutics.

Career
In 2014, Chanda, along with Bin Zhou, Yingyao Zhou, Max Chang, Lars Pache and Chris Benner created a free gene annotation and analysis resource called Metascape.

He returned to academic research at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in 2007, where he became director of their Immunity and Pathogenesis program, and joined the Immunology and Microbiology Department at the Scripps Research Institute and Calibr as professor in 2021.

Chanda developed and applied large-scale systems-based approaches to identify host factors critical for viral replication, including influenza, SARS-CoV-2, flaviviruses and HIV-1. His team deployed high-throughput technologies for the discovery of antiviral therapies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and discovered a novel class of latency reversal agents for an HIV-1 cure (3).

Chanda leads several large, multi-institutional collaborative efforts including the Center for Antiviral Medicines (CAMPP), which is a part of the NIAID Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) network, as well as the Reversing Immune Dysfunction for HIV-1 Eradication Program (RID-HIV), which is a member of the National Institutes of Health's Martin Delaney Collaboratories for HIV Cure Research (MDC) program.

Publications

 * König R, Zhou Y, Elleder D, Diamond TL, Bonamy GMC, Irelan JT, Chiang CY, Buu T, DeJesus P, Lilley CE, Seidel S, Opaluch AM, Caldwell JS, Weitzman MD, Kuhen KL, Bandyopadhyay S, Ideker T, Orth AP, Miraglia LJ, Bushman FD, Young JA, Chanda SK. Global analysis of host-pathogen interactions which regulate early-stage HIV-1 replication. Cell. 2008 135(1):49-60. PMCID: PMC26228946
 * König RS, Stertz S, Zhou Y, Inoue A, Hoffmann HH, Bhattacharyya S, Alamares JG, Tscherne DM, Ortigoza MB, Liang Y, Gao Q, Andrews SE, Bandyopadhyay S, DeJesus P, Tu BP, Pache L, Shih C, Orth A, Bonamy G, Miraglia L, Ideker T, García-Sastre A, Young JAT, Palese P, Shaw ML, Chanda SK. Human host factors required for influenza virus replication. Nature 2010 Feb 463:813-817. PMCID: PMC2862546
 * Yoh S, Schneider M, Seifried J, Soonthornvacharin S, Akleh RE, Olivieri KC, DeJesus PD, Ruan C, de Castro E, Ruiz PA, Germanaud D, des Protes V, Garcia-Sastre A, Konig R, Chanda SK. PQBP1 is a Proximal Sensor of the cGAS-Dependent Innate Response to HIV-1. Cell. 2015 161(6):1293-305. PMCID: PMC4503237
 * Zhou Y, Zhou B, Pache L, Chang M, Khodabakhshi AH, Tanaseichuk O, Benner C, Chanda SK. Metascape provides a biologist-oriented resource for the analysis of systems-level datasets. Nat Commun. 2019 Apr 3;10(1):1523.
 * Yuan S, Yin X, Meng X, Chan JF, Ye ZW, Riva L, Pache L, Chan CC, Lai PM, Chan CC, Poon VK, Lee AC, Matsunaga N, Pu Y, Yuen CK, Cao J, Liang R, Tang K, Sheng L, Du Y, Xu W, Lau CY, Sit KY, Au WK, Wang R, Zhang YY, Tang YD, Clausen TM, Pihl J, Oh J, Sze KH, Zhang AJ, Chu H, Kok KH, Wang D, Cai XH, Esko JD, Hung IF, Li RA, Chen H, Sun H, Jin DY, Sun R, Chanda SK, Yuen KY. Clofazimine broadly inhibits coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2. Nature. 2021 593(7859):418-423. PMID 33727703
 * Martin-Sancho L, Lewinski MK, Pache L, Stoneham CA, Yin X, Becker ME, Pratt D, Churas C, Rosenthal SB, Liu S, Weston S, De Jesus PD, O'Neill AM, Gounder AP, Nguyen C, Pu Y, Curry HM, Oom AL, Miorin L, Rodriguez-Frandsen A, Zheng F, Wu C, Xiong Y, Urbanowski M, Shaw ML, Chang MW, Benner C, Hope TJ, Frieman MB, García-Sastre A, Ideker T, Hultquist JF, Guatelli J, Chanda SK. Functional landscape of SARS-CoV-2 cellular restriction. Mol Cell. 2021 Jun 17;81(12):2656-2668. PMCID: PMC8043580
 * Yoh S, Mamede J, Lau D, Ahn N, Sánchez-Aparicio MT, Temple J, Tuckwell A, Fuchs NV, Cianci GC, Riva L, Curry H, Yin X, Gambut S, Simons LM, Hultquist JF, König r, Xiong Y, García-Sastre A, Böcking T, Hope TJ, Chanda SK. Recognition of HIV-1 capsid by PQBP1 licenses an innate immune sensing of nascent HIV-1 DNA. Mol Cell. 2022 Aug 4;82(15):2871-2884. PMCID: PMC9552964