Miss Lekhika Pathak is the Associate Director of KaviKrishna Laboratory (KKL), IIT Guwahati Research Park, IIT Guwahati, Assam. She assumes the role of the administrative and executive head of the laboratory, its research and related activities in real-time. It is because of her sheer perseverance and dedicated nature towards the betterment of the laboratory that made a smooth transition of KKL from Guwahati Biotech Park to IITG Research Park in the year 2021. Speaking about her achievements and contributions to this laboratory, she was the constant driving force behind the DBT (Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India) grant on TB (Tuberculosis) research and under her, it was possible for KKL to be registered under the FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act) in the year 2023.
Moreover, she is a Ph.D. student under the guidance of Dr. Bikul Das, Senior Scientist and Founder Director of KaviKrishna, registered in IIT Guwahati. Her research work involves a novel idea in the field of biomedical science - “Stem Cell Altruism”, an idea derived from the Indian Vedic Philosophy of Avatarvada. Miss Lekhika Pathak’s doctoral research work includes understanding the role of stem cell niche defense in Tuberculosis (TB) and Cancer dormancy to relapse. Her work includes study on stem cell biology using the host-pathogen interaction and utilize their interaction to target dormant TB reactivation and Cancer relapse.
Moreover, she was the only one from India to present her poster at the 37th SITC Annual Conference held in Boston, MA, USA in 2022. Her first-author research article “Coronavirus Activates an Altruistic Stem Cell - Mediated Defense Mechanism that Reactivates Dormant Tuberculosis” published in 2021 in ‘The American Journal of Pathology’ is found to be relevant in developing a possible cure for COVID-19 virus and selected by Elsevier journal for press release in more than 200 global news platform including eurekalert.
Miss Lekhika Pathak took the initiative to reorganize KaviKrishna Telemedicine Care in 2018 and played a key role in establishing the KaviKrishna Living Muga Museum (KKM) in September, 2019 in Sualkuchi. She has been instrumental in the community based participatory research (CBPR) in the Sualkuchi-Hajo cultural complex with the philosophy, economics and medical humanities students of KaviKrishna centre of Indian Knowledge System.
Her deep connection with the weavers/volunteers/cancer patient family members played an important role in CBPR research of KaviKrishna. She led the KaviKrishna team in many regional and national events to showcase their work on muga silk culture. She has initiated the 1/2/3/4 months of research training program for graduate and post graduate science students at KaviKrishna Laboratory.
In last 5 years, more than 40 students from different institutes of India and 5 students from different colleges of US have successfully completed research training program under her supervision. Additionally, 2 M.Sc. Biotechnology students had successfully completed their Dissertation work in ‘Cancer and Stem Cell Biology’, 4 MSc. students in‘Cancer and Stem Cell Biology’ and six students in ‘Stem Cells and Infectious Biology’ have completed their Research internship.
