Dr. Sreeja Roy is an Associate Professor at the Amrita Research Center, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Faridabad. She earned her BSc (Hons) in Viral Immunology from the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, followed by an MSc in Infection Biology from the University of Lübeck, Germany. Her master’s research focused on the therapeutic role of Interleukin-10 in mitigating complement-mediated autoimmunity. Dr. Roy returned to The John Curtin School of Medical Research, ANU, Canberra, to pursue a PhD in mucosal immunology focusing on HIV vaccines. Her doctoral work emphasized the advantages of mucosal vaccines over parenteral vaccines against mucosal pathogens like HIV. She demonstrated that nature of the viral vaccine vector plays a crucial role in influencing mucosal innate lymphoid cell (ILC) and dendritic cell (DC) profiles that ultimately determine the vaccine efficacy. Building on her expertise in mucosal immunology, Dr. Roy completed her first postdoctoral fellowship at Albany Medical College, New York, where she contributed towards the development of an intranasal universal influenza vaccine capable of eliciting cross-protective immunity. In her second postdoctoral fellowship at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, California, in an effort to consolidate her expertise in chronic viral vaccines, autoimmune therapeutics and host-pathogen interactions, she shifted her focus to translational medicine, investigating immune mechanisms underlying novel immunotherapy strategies for treatment-resistant solid tumors that can complement immune checkpoint blockade therapies for improved patient outcomes.
At Amrita Research Center, Dr. Roy is now focused on developing a site-specific therapeutic cancer vaccine that can circumvent stromal barriers to access and induce lymphoid organisation in the tumor microenvironment for effective tumor growth regression.