Satya Dandekar
Director
Developmental Core

email: sdandekar@ucdavis.edu

Specialty: Infectious Diseases

Undergraduate Education: Saurashtra University, Rajkot, India, B.Sc., 1972

Other School: M.S. University, Baroda, India, M.Sc., 1974

Medical Education: M.S. University, Baroda, India, Ph.D., 1979

Professional Memberships: American Association for Advancement of Science, American Society for Microbiologists, International AIDS Society, Society for Mucosal Immunology

Dr. Dandekar, a Professor at UC Davis, has been involved in retrovirus research for almost 15 years. She has served as a reviewer and as the chair of AIDS Study Sections at the NIH. She has participated in the review of grant applications and program projects on AIDS, animal models for AIDS, and the ACTG.

Dr. Dandekar has been an active member of the Microbiology Graduate Group , the Immunology Graduate Group and the Comparative Pathology Graduate Group. She is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Microbiology Graduate Group. Since 2002 Dr. Dandekar is the Chair of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine and the Director of the School of Medicine Microarray Core Facility. Dr. Dandekar also has a joint appointment in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, and has been responsible for organizing campus-wide research efforts on HIV-1.

Dandekar's research efforts have been focused on the retroviral pathogenesis with specific emphasis on mucosal infection. Her laboratory identified cellular targets of both SIV and FIV in lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissues in primary and advanced stages of viral infections. Her research on feline immunodeficiency virus model first described the cellular targets lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissues viral dissemination in primary FIV infection and through disease progression. She also identified seronegative FIV PCR-positive state in cats exposed to FIV through mucosal route.

Dr. Dandekar has an active research program to study mechanisms of gastroenteropathy in HIV infection utilizing simian model. She developed the SIV enteropathogenic model for HIV-associated enteropathy following the studies at UC Davis on HIV-1 infected patients. Her research group was the first to describe intestinal mucosal infection and intestinal dysfunction in the primary acute stage of infection and its relation to viral pathogenesis and disease progression. Dandekar's laboratory standardized assays to measure clinical nutrient malabsorption in monkeys following SIV infection . Dandekar's laboratory also extensively studied the phenotypic and functional changes in T CD4+ and CD8+ T cells at gastrointestinal mucosal sites during primary SIV infection and through the course of disease development.

Her current research efforts have focused on gastrointestinal mucosal infection and immunity in HIV infected patients. Her laboratory has expertise in in situ hybridization detection of SIV and HIV nucleic acids, immunohistochemistry (fluorescent and enzyme based), SIV and cytokine ELISA, flowcytometric analysis of intracellular cytokines and chemokines and cell markers of apoptosis and cell proliferation, cell activation and cell specific markers, RealTime PCR of cytokines and other genes, transcriptional analysis using oligonucleotide micorarrays, clinical tests of nutrient absorption in monkeys, SIV tissue culture assays, HMA for viral genomic variation and T cell repertoire studies and molecular cloning and sequence analysis of viral genomes from tissues. Dandekar's research has been supported by NIH R01 grants and the National Science Foundation. She has served as the PI and co-investigator on a number of NIH grants.

Michael D. George, Elizabeth Reay, Sumathi, Sankaran, S.Dandekar. Early anti-retroviral therapy in simian immunodeficiency virus infection leads to mucosal CD4+ T cell restoration and enhanced gene expression regulating mucosal repair and regeneration. Journal of Virology, 79: 2709-2719, 2005.

Sumathi Sankaran, Moraima Guadalupe, Elizabeth Reay, Michael D. George, Jason Flamm, Thomas Prindiville and S Dandekar. Gut mucosal T cell responses and gene expression correlate with protection against disease in long-term HIV-1 infected non-progressors. PNAS, 102(28):9860, 2005.

Thomas Ndolo, Michael Syvanen, Thomas Ellison, and S. Dandekar. Evolution of nef variants in gut associated lymphoid tissue of rhesus macaques during primary simian immunodeficiency virus infection. Virology, 43:1-11, 2005.

Stephen J. Libertini, Brian Robinson, Navdeep K. Dhillon, Danielle Glick, Michael George, S. Dandekar, Jeff Gregg, Earl Sawai, and Maria Mudryj. Cyclin E both regulates and is regulated by calpain 2, a protease associated with metastatic breast cancer phenotype, Cancer Research,65 (23): 10700-10708, 2005.

Hau Nguyen, Sumathi Sankaran, S. Dandekar. Hepatitis C virus core protein induces expression of genes regulating immune evasion and anti-apoptosis in hepatocytes. Virology, 2006, in press.

George MD, Verhoeven D, Smit-McBride Z, and S. Dandekar S. Gene expression profiling of gut mucosa and mesenteric lymph nodes in simian immunodeficiency virus infected macaques with divergent disease course. J. Med. Primatology, 35(4-5):261-9, 2006.

Thomas M.Ndolo, M.D. George, H. Nguyen, and S. Dandekar. Expression of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Nef Protein in CD4+ T cells leads to a Molecular Profile of Viral persistence and Immune Evasion, Virology, 2006, in press.

Guadalupe M, S Sankaran, MD. George, E Reay, D Verhoeven, BL. Shacklett, J Flamm, J Wegelin, T Prindiville, and S Dandekar. Viral Suppression and Immune Restoration in the Gastrointestinal Mucosa of HIV-1 infected Patients Initiating Therapy during Primary or Chronic Infection. Journal of Virology, 80(16):8236-47. 2006.