Basudha Basu

Dr. Basudha Basu is a Research Fellow in Stem Cell Biology at the School of Medicine, University of Leeds, Faculty of Medicine and Health. She is based in the Leeds Centre for Disease Models and contributes to research on inherited retinal diseases using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) and gene editing technologies.

Her educational background includes:

• M.Sc. in Genetics, University of Delhi, India
• Ph.D. in Life Sciences (Neurobiology), National Centre for Biological Sciences (TIFR), Bangalore, India

Her primary research interests lie in stem cell biology, cilia biology, and neurobiology, with a focus on modeling retinal dystrophies. She uses CRISPR-Cas9 to introduce patient mutations into iPS cells and differentiates them into retinal cell types to study disease mechanisms. Her work previously explored the role of PRPF31 in retinitis pigmentosa and now extends to other genes involved in retinal degeneration. She has also investigated left-right axis patterning, serotonin signaling in early embryos, and SHH signaling in medulloblastoma models.

Dr. Basu has been recognized with the Brown and Coxe Fellowship during her postdoctoral research at Yale University. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and actively contributes to teaching, delivering tutorials for MSc Human Molecular Genetics and MBChB EMS programs, as well as practicals in Precision Medicine and Molecular Medicine. She supervises student laboratory projects and has helped establish the stem cell culture facility at the University of Leeds in 2018.

She is a member of the UK Cilia Network, the British Society for Developmental Biology, and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Her interdisciplinary research bridges developmental biology, genetics, and regenerative medicine, with long-term goals of understanding molecular mechanisms of ciliopathies and retinal diseases.