Manasi Nandi

Dr Manasi Nandi is a Senior Lecturer in Integrative Pharmacology. Her research focuses on cardiovascular regulation, in disorders including pulmonary hypertension and septic shock. She has used pharmacological, disease modifying and genetically modified systems, undertaking an integrative approach, to identify novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of vascular dysfunction. She completed her PhD at the Institute of Child Health and post doctoral training at University College London in the laboratory of Professor Patrick Vallance. During this time, she developed a number of in vivo systems to characterise a novel mouse mutant and small molecule, and identified a nitric oxide modifying pathway as a novel target for the treatment of septic shock. This project led to the award of a Wellcome Trust Seeding Drug Discovery Grant to UCL, on which she was the biology project manager. She was awarded a British Heart Foundation Intermediate Fellowship immediately prior to commencing her lectureship at King’s College London in 2009.

Since joining King’s, her research has been supported by funders including the British Heart Foundation, BBSRC, University of London and The Royal Society.

Current Research Interests:

1)      The investigation of nitric oxide modifying pathways including the role and regulation of tetrahydrobiopterin (a nitric oxide synthase cofactor) in the progression of hypertension and septic shock.

2)      The development of translatable preclinical research models to understand whole body responses to sepsis, trauma and other cardiovascular diseases with a particular focus multi-parameter analysis including hemodynamic and blood flow measurements in the macro and micro circulation.

3)      The refinement of preclinical models to improve experimental animal welfare whilst optimising scientific outputs (in conjunction with an RSPCA expert working group)

4)      The detailed investigation of physiological waveforms (e.g. blood pressure) using a novel mathematical method developed by Prof Philip Aston (Mathematics, University of Surrey). The project is currently partnering up with physiologists and clinicians within King’s Health Partners and beyond to translate the maths outputs to the patient’s bedside.

Mathematical analysis of physiological waveforms for earlier detection of disease/change. Pharmacological and genetic investigation of nitric oxide synthase regulatory enzymes in the cardiovascular system, in healthy physiology and pathophysiology.