Dr. Piyush Agrawal

• D. in Bioinformatics (2014-2019)
• Sc. Bioinformatics, MDU Rohtal (2011-2013)
• B.Sc. (Hons) Microbiology, University of Delhi (2008-2011)

• Assiatant Professor, SRM Institute of Science & Technology (SRMIST), Kattankulathur Campus (April 2024 Onwards)
• Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow, National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, USA (August 2020- April 2024)
• Research Scientist I, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IIITD), (Jan 2020-March 2020)

• AI/ML Approaches in Cancer Biology and Precision Oncology
• Multi-omics and Network Biology in Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases
• Liquid Biopsy and Tumor Microenvironment in Cancer
• Microbiome-driven cancer progression
• AI-driven Therapeutic Peptide Discovery for Cancer and Antimicrobial Resistance
• Molecular Interplay Between Cardiovascular Diseases and Cancer
• Computational Approaches to Antimicrobial Resistance
• Predictive Modeling for Precision Medicine
• AI/ML-based Tool Development for Biomedical Research

Funded Projects

Completed

• Title: Multi-omics Based Approach to Elucidate the Role of LOX Enzyme in Oral Submucous Fibrosis and Characterizing Novel Drugs using Molecular Docking Approaches
  Role: Principal Investigator (PI)
  Funding Agency: SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu
  Year & Duration: 2024; Duration not specified
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹23,298

Ongoing

• Title: Investigating the Impact of Homeopathic Therapy on Clinical Metabolic Control and Systemic Inflammatory Markers in Patients of Stage III & IV Periodontitis with Diabetes: A Randomized Multi-Arm Clinical Trial
  Role: Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI)
  Funding Agency: Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy, Ministry of Ayush, Government of India
  Year & Duration: 2025; 2 years
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹1,38,22,296
• Title: Safety and Effectiveness of Homeopathy as an Add-on Treatment to Standard Care in the Management of Cardiac Arrhythmia: A Blinded Randomized Parallel-Group, Exploratory, Feasibility, Clinical Trial
  Role: Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI)
  Funding Agency: Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy, Ministry of Ayush, Government of India
  Year & Duration: 2025; 3 years
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹1,04,93,834
• Title: 1st Indian Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (IndiBioCom 2026)
  Role: Principal Investigator (PI)
  Funding Agency: Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), Government of India
  Year & Duration: 2026; Duration not specified
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹3,50,000
• Title: AI-HerboScreen: Development of Novel Artificial Intelligence Framework for Therapeutic Repurposing and Validating Indian Medicinal Plant Bioactives Targeting the TGF-β/INHBA Axis in Oral Submucous Fibrosis
  Role: Principal Investigator (PI)
  Funding Agency: Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), Government of India
  Year & Duration: 2026; 3 years
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹53,75,103
• Title: Machine Learning and Transcriptomic Profile Guided Identification of Biomarkers Associated with Treatment Resistance in Indian Oral Cancer Patients
  Role: Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI)
  Funding Agency: SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu, India
  Year & Duration: 2026; 3 years
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹4,75,000

Publications

• GBD 2023 Heart Failure Collaborators. Global, Regional, and National Burden of Heart Failure, 1990-2023: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023. JAMA Cardiology, 2026. doi: 10.1001/jamacardio.2026.4068. , IF: 15.2, Q1, PMID: 42814432
• Halder D, Varshini PV, Mitra T, Anil Kumar AHS, Agrawal P, Das M, Kumar SA, Kumari R, Natarajan MSS, Janardhanan R. Exosomal microRNAs as Biomarkers of Multimorbidity Risk in Lean and Obese Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences. 2026. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2026.1868855. PMID: NA
• GBD 2023 Oral Disorders Collaborators. Global and regional progress towards reduced burden of oral conditions between 2019 and 2023: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023. The Lancet Public Health. 2026. doi: 10.1016/S2468-2667(26)00143-X. PMID: 42612648.
• Thangaraju R, Kamlesh N, Shipin M, Mitra T, Anil Kumar AHS, Gopinathan A, Ansari AP, Karwasra R, Karthikeyan D, Agrawal P, Anwar N, Daniel PV, Ahmed NZ, Janardhanan R. Molecular insights of a Unani formulation in targeting fibrosis-associated diseases. Frontiers in Pharmacology. 2026. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2026.1816025. PMID: 42688889.
• Sharmin M, Olgun G, Agrawal P, Singh A, Hannenhalli S. CATS - a tool to contextualize cancer hallmarks to specific cancer types. iScience. 2026;27(6):116374. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2026.116374. PMID: 42369043.
• GBD 2023 Diarrhoeal Disease and Enteric Infectious Diseases Collaborators. Global burden of enteric infectious diseases, diarrhoeal diseases, and corresponding aetiologies, 1990–2023: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023. The Lancet Infectious Diseases. 2026. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(26)00194-5. PMID: NA.
• Mokal CN, Agrawal P*. Delineating novel diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for oral submucosal fibrosis: an integrative multi-omics and machine learning approach. Frontiers in Bioinformatics. 2026;6:1803111. doi: 10.3389/fbinf.2026.1803111. PMID: 42158597.
• Pasi D, Aswathy B, Das M, Agrawal P*. Breast Cancer Pathogenesis, Diagnosis and Treatment: A Comprehensive Review. Frontiers in Oncology. 2026;16:1773232. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2026.1773232. PMID: 41971420.
• Agrawal P, Timon A, Gopalan V, Singh A, Hannenhalli S. UNITe: Exploiting Conserved links between Oncogenesis and Homeostasis to Identify Novel Cancer Drivers. Frontiers in Oncology. 2026;16:1711517. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2026.1711517. PMID: 41815548.
• Vaid P, Puntambekar A, Kanse P, Kadu S, Agrawal P, Khatpe A, Banale R, Reddy R, Kelkar DA, Hannenhalli S, Shashidhara LS, Koppiker C, Kulkarni M. EGFR and AR expression and co-expression in Indian triple-negative breast cancer with patient outcome association. Scientific Reports. 2026;16. doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-40913-9. PMID: 41723216.
• Varshini PV, Halder D, Mitra T, Anil Kumar AHS, Agrawal P, Muralidharan TR, Krishnan R, Dhileeban CM, Meenakshi Sundari SN, Janardhanan R. Circulating exosomal miRNA in acute coronary syndrome: mechanisms, clinical relevance and future directions. Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences. 2026;13. PMID: 42582111.
• Mokal CN, Das M, Hannenhalli S, Agrawal P*. Oral Submucosal Fibrosis: A comprehensive review on pathogenesis, diagnosis, therapeutics and computational advances. Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. 2025;13:1754209. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2025.1754209. PMID: 41660015.
• Patiyal S, Agrawal P*. Network-based approach identifies key genes associated with tumor heterogeneity in HPV positive and negative head and neck cancer patients. Scientific Reports. 2025;15:28864. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-13604-0. PMID: 40775425.
• Mitra T, Yadav DV, Kumari R, Agrawal P*, Janardhanan R*. Integrating transcriptomic and epigenomic data to identify potential biomarkers in gestational diabetes mellitus patients. Scientific Reports. 2025;15:32768. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-18018-6. PMID: 40998941.
• Pandey A, Lenin RR, Patiyal S, Agrawal P*. High Throughput Meta-analysis of Antimicrobial Peptides for Characterizing Class-Specific Therapeutic Candidates: An In Silico Approach. Probiotics and Antimicrobial Proteins. 2025. doi: 10.1007/s12602-025-10596-1. PMID: 40423878.
• Agrawal P*, Gopalan V, Rumi MA, Hannenhalli S*. Predicting gene expression change upon epigenomic drug treatment. F1000Research. 2025;12:1089. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.140273.3. PMID: 40417623.
• Nandi D, Janardhanan R, Hannenhalli S*, Agrawal P*. Molecular signatures bidirectionally link myocardial infarction and lung cancer. Frontiers in Medicine. 2025;12:1576375. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1576375. PMID: 40270498.
• Agrawal P*, Olgun G, Singh A, Gopalan V, Hannenhalli S*. Characterizing the pan-cancer role of exosomal miRNAs in metastasis across cancers. Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal. 2025;27:252–264. doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2024.12.025. PMID: 39866667.
• Agrawal P*, Hannenhalli S*. Protocol for identifying key genes using network-based approach as an alternative to differential expression analysis. STAR Protocols. 2024;5:103472. doi: 10.1016/j.xpro.2024.103472. PMID: 39636731.
• Agrawal P*, Jain N, Gopalan V, Timon A, Singh A, Rajagopal PS, Hannenhalli S*. Network-based approach elucidates critical genes in BRCA subtypes and chemotherapy response in Triple Negative Breast Cancer. iScience. 2024;27(5):109752. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109752. PMID: 38699227.
• Pandey A, Patiyal S, Lathwal A, Arora C, Kaur D, Dhall A, Mishra G, Kaur H, Sharma N, Jain S, Usmani SS, Agrawal P, Kumar R, Kumar V, Raghava GPS.. Pfeature: A Tool for Computing Wide Range of Protein Features and Building Prediction Models. Journal of Computational Biology. 2023;30(2):204–222. doi: 10.1089/cmb.2022.0241. PMID: 36251780.
• Agrawal P, Sambaturu N, Olgun G, Hannenhalli S*. A path-based analysis of infected cell line and COVID-19 patient transcriptome reveals novel potential targets and drugs against SARS-CoV-2. Frontiers in Immunology. 2022;13:918817. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.918817. PMID: 35844595.
• Singh A, Rajeevan A, Gopalan V, Agrawal P, Day CP, Hannenhalli S. Broad misappropriation of developmental splicing profile by cancer in multiple organs. Nature Communications. 2022;13:7664. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-35322-1. PMID: 36509773.
• Agrawal P, Bhagat D, Mahalwal M, Sharma N, Raghava GPS. AntiCP 2.0: an updated model for predicting anticancer peptides. Briefings in Bioinformatics. 2021 May;22(3):bbaa153. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbaa153. PMID: 32770192
• Agrawal P, Mishra G, Raghava GPS. SAMbinder: A method for predicting S-adenosyl-L-methionine binding residues of a protein from its amino acid sequence. Frontiers in Pharmacology. 2020;10:1690. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2019.01690. PMID: 32082172.
• Yang M, Petralia F, Li Z, et al. Community Assessment of the Predictability of Cancer Protein and Phosphoprotein Levels from Genomics and Transcriptomics. Cell Systems. 2020;11:186–195. doi: 10.1016/j.cels.2020.06.013. PMID: 32710834.
• Mason MJ, Schinke C, Eng CLP, et al. Multiple Myeloma DREAM Challenge reveals epigenetic regulator PHF19 as marker of aggressive disease. Leukemia. 2020;34:1866–1874. doi: 10.1038/s41375-020-0742-z. PMID: 32060406.
• Patiyal S, Kaur D, Kaur H, Sharma N, Dhall A, Sahai S, Agrawal P, Maryam L, Arora C, Raghava GPS. A web-based platform on coronavirus disease-19 to maintain predicted diagnostic, drug and vaccine candidates. Monoclonal Antibodies in Immunodiagnosis and Immunotherapy. 2020;39:204–216. doi: 10.1089/mab.2020.0035. PMID: 33136473.
• Kumar V, Kumar R, Agrawal P, Patiyal S, Raghava GPS. A method for predicting hemolytic potency of chemically modified peptides from its structure. Frontiers in Pharmacology. 2020;11:54. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2020.00054. PMID: 32153395.
• Patiyal S, Agrawal P, Kumar V, Dhall A, Kumar R, Mishra G, Raghava GPS. NAGbinder: An approach for identifying N-acetylglucosamine interacting residues of a protein from its primary sequence. Protein Science. 2020;29:201–210. doi: 10.1002/pro.3761. PMID: 31654438.
• Kumar R, Nagpal G, Kumar V, Usmani SS, Agrawal P, Raghava GPS. HumCFS: a database of fragile sites in human chromosomes. BMC Genomics. 2019;19:1–8. doi: 10.1186/s12864-018-5330-5. PMID: 30999860.
• Agrawal P, Kumar S, Singh A, Raghava GPS, Singh IK. NeuroPIpred: a tool to predict, design, and scan insect neuropeptides. Scientific Reports. 2019;9:5129–5140. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-41538-x. PMID: 30914676.
• Agrawal P, Singh H, Srivastava HK, Singh S, Kishore G, Raghava GPS. Benchmarking of different molecular docking methods for protein–peptide docking. BMC Bioinformatics. 2019;19:105–124. doi: 10.1186/s12859-018-2449-y. PMID: 30717654.
• Agrawal P, Patiyal S, Kumar R, Kumar V, Singh H, Raghav PK, Raghava GPS. ccPDB 2.0: an updated version of datasets created and compiled from Protein Data Bank. Database (Oxford). 2019:bay142. doi: 10.1093/database/bay142. PMID: 30689843.
• Akhter S, Kaur H, Agrawal P, Raghava GPS. RareLSD: a manually curated database of lysosomal enzymes associated with rare diseases. Database (Oxford). 2019:baz112. doi: 10.1093/database/baz112. PMID: 31688938.
• Usmani SS, Agrawal P, Sehgal M, Patel PK, Raghava GPS. ImmunoSPdb: an archive of immunosuppressive peptides. Database (Oxford). 2019:baz012. doi: 10.1093/database/baz012. PMID: 30753476.
• Agrawal P, Raghava GPS. Prediction of antimicrobial potential of a chemically modified peptide from its tertiary structure. Frontiers in Microbiology. 2018;9:2551. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.02551. PMID: 30416494.
• Kumar V, Agrawal P, Kumar R, Bhalla S, Usmani SS, Varshney GC, Raghava GPS. Prediction of Cell-Penetrating Potential of Modified Peptides Containing Natural and Chemically Modified Residues. Frontiers in Microbiology. 2018;9:725. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00725. PMID: 29706944.
• Nagpal G, Chaudhary K, Agrawal P, Raghava GPS. Computer-aided prediction of antigen presenting cell modulators for designing peptide-based vaccine adjuvants. Journal of Translational Medicine. 2018;16:1–15. doi: 10.1186/s12967-018-1560-1. PMID: 29970096.
• Agrawal P, Raghav PK, Bhalla S, Sharma N, Raghava GPS. Overview of free software developed for designing drugs based on protein-small molecule interaction. Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry. 2018;18:1146–1167. doi: 10.2174/1568026618666180816155131. PMID: 30117394.
• Mathur D, Singh S, Mehta A, Agrawal P, Raghava GPS. In silico approaches for predicting the half-life of natural and modified peptides in blood. PLOS ONE. 2018;13(6):e0196829. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0196829. PMID: 29856745.
• Agrawal P, Bhalla S, Chaudhary K, Kumar R, Sharma M, Raghava GPS. In Silico Approach for Prediction of Antifungal Peptides. Frontiers in Microbiology. 2018;9:323. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00323. PMID: 29535692.
• Dhanda SK, Usmani SS, Agrawal P, Nagpal G, Gautam A, Raghava GPS. Novel in silico tools for designing peptide-based subunit vaccines and immunotherapeutics. Briefings in Bioinformatics. 2017;18(3):467–478. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbw025. PMID: 27016393.
• Agrawal P, Bhalla S, Usmani SS, Singh S, Chaudhary K, Raghava GPS, Gautam A. CPPsite 2.0: a repository of experimentally validated cell-penetrating peptides. Nucleic Acids Research. 2016;44(D1):D1098–D1103. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkv1266. PMID: 26586798.
• Mathur D, Anand P, Kaur H, Agrawal P, Mehta A, Kumar R, Singh S, Raghava GPS. PEPlife: a repository of the half-life of peptides. Scientific Reports. 2016;6:36617–36622. doi: 10.1038/srep36617. PMID: 27819351.
• Singh S, Chaudhary K, Dhanda SK, Bhalla S, Usmani SS, Gautam A, Tuknait A, Agrawal P, Mathur D, Raghava GPS. SATPdb: a database of structurally annotated therapeutic peptides. Nucleic Acids Research. 2016;44(D1):D1119–D1126. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkv1114. PMID: 26527728.
• Agrawal P, Thakur Z, Kulharia M. Homology modeling and structural validation of tissue factor pathway inhibitor. Bioinformation. 2013;9:808–812. doi: 10.6026/97320630009808. PMID: 24143050

Ongoing

• Title: Investigating the Impact of Homeopathic Therapy on Clinical Metabolic Control and Systemic Inflammatory Markers in Patients of Stage III & IV Periodontitis with Diabetes: A Randomized Multi-Arm Clinical Trial
  Role: Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI)
  Funding Agency: Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy, Ministry of Ayush, Government of India
  Year & Duration: 2025; 2 years
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹1,38,22,296
• Title: Safety and Effectiveness of Homeopathy as an Add-on Treatment to Standard Care in the Management of Cardiac Arrhythmia: A Blinded Randomized Parallel-Group, Exploratory, Feasibility, Clinical Trial
  Role: Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI)
  Funding Agency: Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy, Ministry of Ayush, Government of India
  Year & Duration: 2025; 3 years
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹1,04,93,834
• Title: 1st Indian Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (IndiBioCom 2026)
  Role: Principal Investigator (PI)
  Funding Agency: Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), Government of India
  Year & Duration: 2026; Duration not specified
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹3,50,000
• Title: AI-HerboScreen: Development of Novel Artificial Intelligence Framework for Therapeutic Repurposing and Validating Indian Medicinal Plant Bioactives Targeting the TGF-β/INHBA Axis in Oral Submucous Fibrosis
  Role: Principal Investigator (PI)
  Funding Agency: Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), Government of India
  Year & Duration: 2026; 3 years
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹53,75,103
• 5. Title: Machine Learning and Transcriptomic Profile Guided Identification of Biomarkers Associated with Treatment Resistance in Indian Oral Cancer Patients
  Role: Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI)
  Funding Agency: SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu, India
  Year & Duration: 2026; 3 years
  Sanctioned Amount: ₹4,75,000

• 2026: INCOB/ISCB-APAC 2026 Conference Fellowship, 25th International Conference on Bioinformatics.
• 2026: Young Investigator Meeting (YIM) 2026 Award, IndiaBioscience.
• 2025: BIRD (BIOCLUES Innovation, Research & Development) Award-2025, BIOCLUES.
• 2025: Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Visiting Scientist Award.
• 2024: Fellows Award for Research and Excellence (FARE), National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA.
• 2020: Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA), National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, USA.
• 2019: DST-SERB Travel Fellowship to attend the 12th International Biocuration Conference, Cambridge, UK.
• 2018: 2nd Prize in Oral Paper Presentation, 17th International Conference on Bioinformatics, JNU.
• 2017: B4 Fellow, Genomics in Healthcare and Translational Research workshop.
• 2016: 2nd Prize in Scientific Paper Presentation in Hindi, CSIR-IMTECH.
• 2016: Senior Research Fellowship, DST-INSPIRE.
• 2015: Junior Research Fellowship, DST-INSPIRE.
• 2014: AIR-1035, GATE 2014 Biotechnology.
• 2013: Gold Medalist / University Topper, M.Sc. Bioinformatics, Maharshi Dayanand University.
• 2011–12: DBT Scholarship during Master's

PhD Scholars

• Name: Ekta Bera
  Email: eb9713@srmist.edu.in
  Education: M.Sc. Zoology
  Area of interest: Cervical Cancer, Computational Biology & Bioinformatics, Biomarker Discovery, Cancer Genomics, AI/ML, Precision Oncology, and Microbiomics.
• Name: Harini Devi I
  Email: hi7046@srmist.edu.in
  Education: M.Sc. Bioinformatics and Data Sciences
  Area of interest: Endometrial Cancer, Computational Biology & Bioinformatics, Biomarker Discovery, Cancer Genomics, AI/ML, Precision Oncology, and Microbiomics.

Availability: Yes

Research Area: Bioinformatics, Cancer Genomics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning/Deep Learning, Multi-omics, Network Biology, Precision Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Antimicrobial Resistance

Number of Positions: 2

Eligibility/Preferred Background: Candidates with a background in bioinformatics, computational biology, computer science, data science, biology, or related disciplines and an interest in computational biomedical research.

Mode of Registration: Full-time