Dr Pragya Yadav

Dr Pragya D Yadav, Scientist and in-charge of Biosafety level-4 laboratory, Asia’s first state of art facility to handle high risk pathogens at Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Institute of Virology has been working in the field of public health for the past two decades. Her expertise ranges across the fields of virology, molecular biology, sero-surveillance, epidemiology, bioinformatics, microbiology, biosecurity and biosafety, emerging / re-emerging pathogens of pandemic potential, outbreak investigation due to known and unknown pathogens, development of serological and molecular diagnostics for novel pathogens and preclinical small and large animal studies on evaluation of vaccines. She has extensively worked on disease-causing viruses of public health importance which includes SARS-CoV-2, Nipah, Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola, Zika, Kyasanur Forest Disease, Buffalo pox, Bunyaviruses and novel viruses from ticks, mosquitoes and bats. Her expertise helped in setting up diagnostic assays which helped in identifying the Nipah outbreak of Kerala. The proactive Bat survey in India discovered that Pteropus bats involved in Nipah virus transmission in India, which were the source for two earlier outbreaks in India (2001 and 2007).

In the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic she has worked on diagnostic and whole genome sequencing of the first case in India, isolation of the SARS-CoV-2, development of animal models (Syrian Golden hamster, mice) to understand the pathogenesis, immune response ad disease activity, development of the whole virus inactivated vaccine (BBV152/Covaxin) in collaboration with BBIL, and hamster and non-human primate virus challenge studies to evaluate the safety, immunogenicity and protective efficacy of the vaccine candidate. She has contributed to the understanding of pathogenesis, transmissibility and vaccine efficacy of the SARS-CoV-2 VOCs in vitro and in-vivo which have enhanced the knowledge in the scientific community of the world. She is reviewer of 40 Journals, Associate Editor of frontiers in Virology and have published 200 papers in peer reviewed journals.