NituKumari
About
Dr. Nitu KumariPostdoctoral Fellow, Goyal Lab
Northwestern University, Chicago
Why do genetically similar cancer cells make different choices under the same drug, and how do they remember?
Nitu Kumari is a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Yogesh Goyal’s lab in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. She studies how individual cancer cells reach different fates under treatment, and how a cell’s earlier states shape its later response to drugs.
She came to that question through DNA repair. For her PhD in Biochemistry at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, working with Prof. Sathees C. Raghavan, she studied how cells mend broken DNA, focusing on DNA Ligase IV and nonhomologous end joining. She also looked at how unusual DNA structures, such as G-quadruplexes and R-loops, make parts of the genome fragile in cancers including Burkitt’s lymphoma and leukemia.
At Northwestern she pairs DNA lineage barcoding with single-cell sequencing to follow individual cancer cells through treatment. Her work is supported by a Human Frontier Science Program Long-Term Fellowship and a Center for Synthetic Biology Postdoctoral Fellowship.
She grew up in Jharkhand, India. Outside the lab, she enjoys music and time spent near Lake Michigan.
- Position
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Goyal Lab
- Department
- Cell and Developmental Biology, Feinberg School of Medicine
- Institution
- Northwestern University, Chicago
- PhD
- Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, 2023
- Fellowship
- HFSP Long-Term Fellow
- Outside the lab
- Music and Lake Michigan
Affiliations
- Department of Cell and Developmental BiologyNorthwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, United States
- Center for Synthetic BiologyNorthwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, United States
- Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer CenterNorthwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, United States
The career, as a cell cycle
A cell grows, copies its DNA, checks for damage, then divides. Each phase holds one chapter.
Research
Her work began with how cells repair and protect their DNA, and now asks how individual cancer cells decide their fate under treatment. Select any area to read about it and send a signal along the pathway.
Repair this strand
Cells proofread their DNA constantly. Highlighted bases do not pair correctly. Tap each one to fix it, the way mismatch repair would.
Publications
Papers, reviews, and preprints from her work at IISc and Northwestern, newest first. Open any entry for a summary, the full author list, and links.
* Equal contribution, as listed in her CV. Citation counts are kept current on Google Scholar.
Awards
Run as a gel. Each lane is a year, and each glowing band is a fellowship or award, from her MS fellowship in 2015 to her 2026 Distinguished Trainee Award. Select a band to read it.
CV
Positions, training, mentoring, and service. The full CV is available as a PDF.
Positions
Mechanistic insight into transcriptional variability and memory driving drug resistance in cancer.
The role of the yeast RNA-binding protein Gbp2 in translation repression and mRNA decay.
Screening a yeast display scFv antibody library for the sensor protein KdpD of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Education
Thesis: A Ligase IV/XRCC4-dependent single-strand break repair pathway for the maintenance of A/T-rich regions during replication in mammals.
Affiliations
Talks and posters
Mentoring
Project: Therapy-Tolerant Persister Cells and Developmental Reprogramming in KRAS-Mutant Cancer.
Teaching and service
Leadership
Selected speakers from across biology and arranged lectures and student interactions.
Organized lecture series and departmental talks, raised funds, and ran social events.
Volunteer and organizing roles for the Genome Biology, Indo-US, and Indo-French conferences, the 42nd ISHG annual meeting, and a divisional review meeting.
Memberships and media
Contact
For collaborations, speaking invitations, or questions about the research, email is the best way to reach me.
Leave a sequence
Type a strand of DNA and watch it pair. A binds T, and G binds C.