Rishi Drolia

Research Interests

Bacterial Pathogenesis: Mechanism of Listeria monocytogenes invasion and translocation across the intestinal, blood-brain and the placental barrier

Probiotic Bioengineering: Designing and validation of next-generation engineered probiotics to mitigate infectious and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)

Multi-Species Biofilms: Mitigation Strategies of major foodborne pathogens in mono and dual-species dry biofilms in the food-processing industry

Selected Publications:

Drolia, R*., Bryant, D. B., Tenguria, S., Jules-Culver, Z. A., Thind, J., Amelunke, B., Liu, D., Gallina, N. L. F., Mishra, K. K., Samaddar, M., Sawale, M. R., Mishra, D. K., Cox, A. D., & Bhunia, A. K. (2024). Listeria adhesion protein orchestrates caveolae-mediated apical junctional remodeling of epithelial barrier for Listeria monocytogenes translocation. , mBio. American Society for Microbiology. https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.02821-23 (*Corresponding Author)

Nathan, V. B., Lu, H., Horn, N. L., Drolia, R.*, & Bhunia, A. K. (2023). Sequestration of zearalenone using microorganisms blend in vitro. Letters in Applied Microbiology. https://doi.org/10.1093/lambio/ovad020 (*Corresponding Author)

‌Drolia, R., Amalaradjou, M. A. R., Ryan, V., Tenguria, S., Liu, D., Bai, X., Xu, L., Singh, A. K., Cox, A. D., Bernal-Crespo, V., Schaber, J. A., Applegate, B. M., Vemulapalli, R., & Bhunia, A. K. (2020). Receptor-targeted engineered probiotics mitigate lethal Listeria infection. Nature Communications, 11(1), 6344. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20200-5

Drolia, R., & Bhunia, A. K. (2019). Crossing the Intestinal Barrier via Listeria Adhesion Protein and Internalin A. Trends in Microbiology, 27(5), 408–425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2018.12.007

‌Drolia, R., Tenguria, S., Durkes, A. C., Turner, J. R., & Bhunia, A. K. (2018). Listeria adhesion protein induces intestinal epithelial barrier dysfunction for bacterial translocation. Cell host & microbe, 23(4), 470-484. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2018.03.004

Patents:

Bioengineered lactobacillus probiotics and the uses thereof
AK Bhunia, R Drolia, OKK Koo, MA Amalaradjou - US Patent 11,090,357, 2021

Peptide-mediated drug delivery across epithelial barrier
AK Bhunia, R Drolia, M Samaddar - US Patent 10,632,208, 2020