Dr. Noopur Thakur has joined as an Assistant Professor at Division of Biological and Life Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Gujarat, India in June 2017. She did her M.Sc at the Dept. of Molecular and Human Genetics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi and Ph.D in understanding the epigenetic regulation of the imprinted genes with the title " Long range Control of Gene Expression by Imprinted Control Regions During Development and Neoplasia " at the Dept. of Animal Development and Genetics, Uppsala University, Sweden. Following Ph.D, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow ( 2005-2010) at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Uppsala, Sweden. As a postdoc she worked on the role of TGFbeta signaling in Prostate Cancer. We were the first ones to demonstrate how TGFbeta activates the non-canonical signaling pathway leading to apoptosis ( Nature cell Biology, 2008). Later joined as a Senior Researcher (2010-2015) at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Uppsala, Sweden. She continued her work on TGFbeta Signaling and its role in Cancer. She had shown in her research how TGFbeta regulates various cellular functions and thus plays an important role in Cancer ( Nature Communication, 2011,Cell Cycle, 2014 and Science Signaling, 2017). Got a well reputed Swedish Cancer Fonden Grant for three years ( 2009-2012).
At Ahmedabad University, Dr. Noopur Thakur is focussed on the role of TGFbeta and other growth factors in maintaining the epigenetic state of the cells and the mechanism how it gets deregulated in the Cancer cells.

• Apoptotic Signaling
• Molecular Biology
• Epigenetics
• Cancer Biology

• Mu Y*, Sundar R*, Thakur N*, Ekman M*, Gudey SK, Yakymovych M, et al. TRAF6 ubiquitinates TGFβ type I receptor to promote its cleavage and nuclear translocation in cancer. Nat Commun 2011; 2:330. (*Shared first authors)
• Sorrentino A*, Thakur N*, Grimsby S*, Marcusson A, von Bulow V, Schuster N, et al. The type I TGFβ receptor engages TRAF6 to activate TAK1 in a receptor kinase-independent manner. Nat Cell  Biol 2008; 10:1199-207. (*Shared first authors)
• Zhang S*, Ekman M*, Thakur N*, Bu S, Davoodpour P, Grimsby S, et al. TGF-induced activation of ATM and p53 mediates apoptosis in a Smad7-dependent manner. Cell Cycle 2006; 5:2787-95. (*Shared first authors)
• Thakur N*, Tiwari VK*, Thomassin H, Pandey RR, Kanduri M, Gondor A, et al. An antisense RNA regulates the bidirectional silencing property of the Kcnq1 imprinting control region. Mol Cell Biol 2004; 24:7855-62. (*Shared first authors)
• Thakur N*, Kanduri M*, Holmgren C, Mukhopadhyay R, Kanduri C. Bidirectional silencing and DNA methylation-sensitive methylation-spreading properties of the Kcnq1 imprinting control region map to the same regions. J Biol Chem 2003; 278:9514-9. (*Shared first authors)
• Thakur N, Gudey SK, Marcusson A, Fu JY, Bergh A, Heldin CH, et al. TGFβ-induced invasion of prostate cancer cells is promoted by c-Jun-dependent transcriptional activation of Snail1. Cell Cycle 2014; 13
• Kanduri C, Thakur N, Pandey RR. The length of the transcript encoded from the Kcnq1ot1 antisense promoter determines the degree of silencing. EMBO J 2006; 25:2096-106.
• Ekman M, Mu Y, Lee SY, Edlund S, Kozakai T, Thakur N, et al. APC and Smad7 link TGFβ type I receptors to the microtubule system to promote cell migration. Mol Biol Cell 2012; 23:2109-21.
• Kanduri C, Kanduri M, Liu L, Thakur N, Pfeifer S, Ohlsson R. The kinetics of deregulation of expression by de novo methylation of the h19 imprinting control region in cancer cells. Cancer Res 2002; 62:4545-8.
• Lynn AM, Jain CK, Kosalai K, Barman P, Thakur N, Batra H, et al. An automated annotation tool for genomic DNA sequences using GeneScan and BLAST. J Genet 2001; 80:9-16.

Immunology

Marene Inga-Britt Landström, Yabing Mu, Reshma Sundar, Noopur Thakur, Shyam Kumar Gudey, Maria Ekman, Carl-Henrik, Heldin. Cleavage inhibitors of transforming factor beta type I receptor and uses thereof in cancer therapy. US20140140998, WO2012125623A2, WO2012125623A3.