Ashutosh Kumar is a classically trained materials engineer. Having grown up with a passion for making things, he has explored steel design and studied stress fractures in alloys.
Throughout Kumar’s education, nonetheless, he was also drawn to biology and medicine. When he was accepted into an undergraduate metallurgical engineering and materials science program at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, the native of Jamshedpur was very excited — and “slightly dissatisfied, since I couldn’t do biology anymore.”
Now a PhD candidate and a MathWorks Fellow in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and a researcher for the Koch Institute, Kumar can merge his wide-ranging interests. He studies the effect of certain bacteria which were observed encouraging the spread of ovarian cancer and possibly reducing the effectiveness of chemotherapy and immunotherapy.
“Some microbes have an affinity toward infecting ovarian cancer cells, which may result in changes within the cellular structure and reprogramming cells to survive in stressful conditions,” Kumar says. “Because of this cells can migrate to different sites and can have a mechanism to develop chemoresistance. This opens an avenue to develop therapies to see if we will begin to undo a few of these changes.”
Kumar’s research combines microbiology, bioengineering, artificial intelligence, big data, and materials science. Using microbiome sequencing and AI, he goals to define microbiome changes which will correlate with poor patient outcomes. Ultimately, his goal is to engineer bacteriophage viruses to reprogram bacteria to work therapeutically.
Kumar began inching toward work within the health sciences just months into earning his bachelor’s degree at IIT Bombay.
“I spotted engineering is so flexible that its applications extend to any field,” he says, adding that he began working with biomaterials “to respect each my degree program and my interests.”
“I loved it a lot that I made a decision to go to graduate school,” he adds.
Starting his PhD program at MIT, he says, “was a unbelievable opportunity to change gears and work on more interdisciplinary or ‘MIT-type’ work.”
Kumar says he and Angela Belcher, the James Mason Crafts Professor of biological engineering, materials science and of the Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research, began discussing the impact of the microbiome on ovarian cancer when he first arrived at MIT.
“I shared my enthusiasm about human health and biology, and we began brainstorming,” he says. “We realized that there’s an unmet need to grasp numerous gynecological cancers. Ovarian cancer is an aggressive cancer, which is frequently diagnosed when it’s too late and has already spread.”
In 2022, Kumar was awarded a MathWorks Fellowship. The fellowships are awarded to School of Engineering graduate students, preferably those that use MATLAB or Simulink — which were developed by the mathematical computer software company MathWorks — of their research. The philanthropic support fueled Kumar’s full transition into health science research.
“The work we’re doing now was initially not funded by traditional sources, and the MathWorks Fellowship gave us the flexibleness to pursue this field,” Kumar says. “It provided me with opportunities to learn latest skills and ask questions on this topic. MathWorks gave me a probability to explore my interests and helped me navigate from being a steel engineer to a cancer scientist.”
Kumar’s work on the connection between bacteria and ovarian cancer began with studying which bacteria are incorporated into tumors in mouse models.
“We began looking closely at changes in cell structure and the way those changes impact cancer progression,” he says, adding that MATLAB image processing helps him and his collaborators track tumor metastasis.
The research team also uses RNA sequencing and MATLAB algorithms to construct a taxonomy of the bacteria.
“Once we have now identified the microbiome composition,” Kumar says, “we wish to see how the microbiome changes as cancer progresses and discover changes in, let’s say, patients who develop chemoresistance.”
He says recent findings that ovarian cancer may originate within the fallopian tubes are promising because detecting cancer-related biomarkers or lesions before cancer spreads to the ovaries could lead on to higher prognoses.
As he pursues his research, Kumar says he is amazingly thankful to Belcher “for believing in me to work on this project.
“She trusted me and my passion for making an impact on human health — although I come from a materials engineering background — and supported me throughout. It was her passion to tackle latest challenges that made it possible for me to work on this concept. She has been an incredible mentor and motivated me to proceed moving forward.”
For her part, Belcher is equally enthralled.
“It has been amazing to work with Ashutosh on this ovarian cancer microbiome project,” she says. “He has been so passionate and dedicated to searching for less-conventional approaches to unravel this debilitating disease. His innovations around searching for very early changes within the microenvironment of this disease could possibly be critical in interception and prevention of ovarian cancer. We began this project with little or no preliminary data, so his MathWorks fellowship was critical within the initiation of the project.”
Kumar, who has been very energetic in student government and community-building activities, believes it is vitally necessary for college students to feel included and at home at their institutions in order that they can develop in ways outside of academics. He says that his own involvement helps him take break day from work.
“Science can never stop, and there’ll all the time be something to do,” he says, explaining that he deliberately schedules break day and that social engagement helps him to experience downtime. “Engaging with community members through events on campus or on the dorm helps set a mental boundary with work.”
Regarding his unusual route through materials science to cancer research, Kumar regards it as something that occurred organically.
“I even have observed that life could be very dynamic,” he says. “What we expect we’d do versus what we find yourself doing isn’t consistent. Five years back, I had no idea I can be at MIT working with such excellent scientific mentors around me.”
