ASCI / Emerging-Generation Awards, 2024
The Emerging Generation Awards (E-Gen Awards) recognize post-MD, pre-faculty appointment physician-scientists who are meaningfully engaged in immersive research.
About the awardee
Inherited bone marrow failure (BMF) disorders are rare diseases that lead to catastrophic effects on affected patients, the majority of whom are children. Senthil Bhoopalan, MBBS, PhD, is a pediatric bone marrow transplant physician-scientist, who is passionate about understanding mechanisms and developing curative therapies for BMF disorders. Dr. Bhoopalan is currently an instructor at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in the lab of Dr. Mitchell Weiss. Following medical training at the Kilpauk Medical College, India, he joined Dr. Daniel Stein’s lab at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he studied host-pathogen interactions in gonococcal infection. He discovered a novel role for NagZ, a protein involved in cell wall synthesis, in biofilm regulation. Subsequently, he completed pediatric residency at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and then a pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship at St. Jude. Dr. Bhoopalan is currently studying Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA), a common BMF disorder of childhood. DBA is caused by heterozygous loss-of-function mutations in ribosomal proteins, with RPS19 being the most frequently mutated gene. Using a Cas9-based approach, he showed that haploinsufficiency of RPS19 leads to TP53-mediated impairment of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) activity. He is now studying the mechanisms underlying HSC defect in DBA and developing a lentiviral vector-based gene therapy trial for DBA. In parallel, he is working on developing genome editing-based therapeutic approaches for patients with BMF, including DBA. Dr. Bhoopalan is excited to realize the full potential of advances in lentiviral vector and genome editing tools to develop curative therapies for patients with BMF disorders. His work is supported by ALSAC/St. Jude, American Society of Healthy, DBA Foundation, Friends of DBA and DBA Canada. Additionally, he enjoys mentoring young researchers in the laboratory and serves as an early-stage professional member of the Stem Cell Engineering Committee of the International Society for Cell and Gene Therapy, where he has contributed to several committee position papers.