De had earlier won the Young Investigator award.
Arnab De, an Indian American scientist and the winner of prestigious Springer Theses Award, has published his book titled “Ubiquitin Chains – Degradation and Beyond.”
De’s thesis on cancer had fetched him the Springer Theses Award for exploring the extent of protein degradation and scrutinizing one particular gene called A20 that causes cancer when not under control. The same was his doctoral thesis while he studied at the Columbia University.
“Ubiquitin chains – simply put, are the signals that the body senses to degrade proteins that are no longer required. This book explores if these chains could have other functions too,” De said.
“We look at this in the context of a tumor-suppressing gene called A20 which might work by modifying these chains,” he said.
Springer Theses Award conferred by Columbia University was a recognition for De’s outstanding Ph.D. research.
Following the announcement, the US Ambassador to India, Richard Verma, had congratulated De for his feat.
After announcing De as this year’s awardee, Springers, which is a leading publisher of scientific journals decided to publish his work in a book format.
While speaking after the receiving the award, De expressed his deep concern for cancer patients as it remains as one of the leading causes of death worldwide.
According to the WHO reports, over 8.2 million people die of cancer every year.
“The International Agency for Research on Cancer’s GLOBOCAN project estimates that there were about 14 million new cases of cancer diagnosed worldwide in 2012 and slightly more than 8 million cancer-related deaths. One million of these new cases and roughly 700,000 of the deaths occurred in India,” Arnab said.
The young Indian American scientist had earlier won the award for Young Investigator at the American Peptide Symposium for developing a peptide-based prodrug that can be used as therapeutics for diabetes.
During his speech at the Springers award ceremony, De had dedicated his achievement to the Indian cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar and his alma mater, Kolkata’s Presidency University.
De said: “Two things that have influenced me the most is sports and education. This thesis is dedicated to Sachin Tendulkar not only for the cricketing joy he provided me but also for being a constant source of inspiration to all Indian youth.”