Bioanalysis Rising Star Award finalist: Shivangi Awasthi
Nominated by: Dina Goykhman, Director at Merck & Co., Inc. (Also known as MSD; PA, USA)
Supporting comments:
“Since joining Merck Regulated Bioanalytics in 2020, Shivangi has supported liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) studies and broadly involved in assay development, validation and sample testing. Some of her research highlights include efforts to apply an alternative hybrid immunoprecipitation-LC–MS approach for anti-drug antibody isotyping. Her investigation provided insights for leveraging LC–MS capability to improve selectivity and drug tolerance, two key limitations of the standard ADA workflow. Recently, she made meaningful contributions to the development of a free drug measurement strategy, an important yet challenging topic in the BA community. Shivangi authored/co-authored several publications on topics related to her academic and post-doctoral work, focusing on proteomics approaches to explore therapeutic targets and characterize biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases.
Shivangi’s experience spanned proteomics and quantitative bioanalysis of small molecules and biologics by mass spectrometry and immunoassay. She has been diligently applying her broad spectrum of skills to various aspects of BA workflows to drive improvements in method sensitivity, selectivity and efficiency. She exemplified curiosity, passion and perseverance in advancing scientific understanding and pursuing innovative solutions to complex questions. As an exceptional scientist in their early career, Shivangi has well positioned herself as a rising star to provide valuable BA insights in the development of increasingly diverse and complex drug modalities”.
Describe the main highlights of your bioanalytical work
During my graduate studies, I utilized LC–MS proteomics and phosphoproteomics to identify clinically applicable biomarkers and therapeutic targets. By analyzing biological changes that occur as diseases progress, these techniques provide valuable insights into disease progression and identify potential targets for reversing its effects. This information is particularly important to the biomedical and pharmaceutical communities. Apart from my dissertation research, I also contributed to studies investigating the role of protein post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation, glycosylation, and citrullination, in disease biology. Our findings resulted in multiple publications that made significant contributions to advancing cancer biomarker discovery. As a post-doctoral fellow, I explored global protein expression alterations linked to protein dysregulation of cryptic exon repression as an approach for biomarker discovery for neurodegenerative diseases. The ability to assess drug efficacy using translational biomarkers is a critical unmet need in ALS-FTD clinical research and has the potential to improve clinical trial design for new therapies. Currently, I am involved in developing LC–MS as a supplemental tool for ADA assay assessment as it provides great specificity, drug tolerance and the capability of multiplexed detection of ADA isotypes.
