Arup K Chakraborty

About

Arup K. Chakraborty is an Institute Professor at MIT, holding the John M. Deutch Institute Professorship, and serves as a Professor of Chemical Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry. His central research focus is to understand the mechanistic underpinnings of the adaptive immune response to pathogens and to harness this understanding for the design of better vaccines and therapies. His work integrates approaches from statistical physics, immunology, and virology, and involves developing and applying theoretical and computational methods to study collective dynamic processes that span molecular to organismal scales. Chakraborty’s research includes investigating T cell signaling, T cell development in the thymus, the human immune response to HIV, and cell membrane biophysics. He has contributed significantly to the understanding of virus evolution, antibody responses, and vaccine design, and has recently explored the role of phase separation in gene regulation. Chakraborty is a member of all three branches of the US National Academies and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has received numerous honors, including the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the E. O. Lawrence Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics. He is also recognized for his excellence in teaching and is a co-author of the book 'Viruses, Pandemics, & Immunity'.

Research topics

• Biology
• Computer Science
• Computational biology
• Physics
• Medicine
• Biophysics
• Genetics
• Virology
• Ecology
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• RNA-Mediated Feedback Control of Transcriptional Condensates

  Cell · 2020 · 614 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Partitioning of cancer therapeutics in nuclear condensates

  Science · 2020 · 517 citations

  The nucleus contains diverse phase-separated condensates that compartmentalize and concentrate biomolecules with distinct physicochemical properties. Here, we investigated whether condensates concentrate small-molecule cancer therapeutics such that their pharmacodynamic properties are altered. We found that antineoplastic drugs become concentrated in specific protein condensates in vitro and that this occurs through physicochemical properties independent of the drug target. This behavior was als…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Optimizing immunization protocols to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 60 citations

  Natural infections and vaccination with a pathogen typically stimulate the production of potent antibodies specific for the pathogen through a Darwinian evolutionary process known as affinity maturation. Such antibodies provide protection against reinfection by the same strain of a pathogen. A highly mutable virus, like HIV or influenza, evades recognition by these strain-specific antibodies via the emergence of new mutant strains. A vaccine that elicits antibodies that can bind to many diverse…

  DOI

• Roadmap on biology in time varying environments

  Physical Biology · 2021 · 39 citations

  Biological organisms experience constantly changing environments, from sudden changes in physiology brought about by feeding, to the regular rising and setting of the Sun, to ecological changes over evolutionary timescales. Living organisms have evolved to thrive in this changing world but the general principles by which organisms shape and are shaped by time varying environments remain elusive. Our understanding is particularly poor in the intermediate regime with no separation of timescales, w…

  DOI

• Proteolethargy is a pathogenic mechanism in chronic disease

  Cell · 2024-11-27 · 23 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Biophysics of Nuclear Condensates

  NSF · $5.0M · 2021–2027

• Balanced signaling cues to guide cell transitions in the blood lineage continuum

  NIH · $2.9M · 2015–2021

• RAISE: A Phase Separation Model for Transcriptional Control in Mammals

  NSF · $1.0M · 2017–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Mehran Kardar

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  68 shared

• Jay T. Groves

  University of California, Berkeley

  64 shared

• Alexis T. Bell

  62 shared

• John P. Barton

  University of California, Riverside

  58 shared

• Arthur Weiss

  43 shared

• Jayajit Das

  The Ohio State University

  41 shared

• Karthik Shekhar

  University of California, Berkeley

  39 shared

• Dennis R. Burton

  Scripps Research Institute

  33 shared

Awards & honors

• NIH Director’s Pioneer Award
• E. O. Lawrence Medal (DOE)
• Guggenheim Fellowship
• Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics from the American P…
• Colburn, Professional Progress, Alpha Chi Sigma and Prausnit…

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