CHINTA
Centre for High Impact Neuroscience and Translational Applications
Harnessing India’s strengths in the physical/computational/engineering/medical sciences to create a global research network in translational neuroscience
The challenge
Neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases represent a major and growing global public health threat. The urgent unmet need is for therapies that will prolong and improve/maintain quality of life. The continued failure to discover new medicines reflects bottlenecks at pivotal stages of drug development, and new interdisciplinary approaches in discovery neuroscience.
Mission statement
This institute, based in TCG-CREST Kolkata, is building a network of experts/partnerships distributed across leading international institutions. Our goal is to:
- Exploit innovative technology based on patient derived neural stem cells to rapidly discover potential new medicines (including repurposed drugs and natural compounds).
- Prioritize innovations in powerful pre-clinical assay platforms that will examine the effects of disease-induced changes, and interventions against them, in animal models across multiple levels of neural organization.
- Train the next generation of young Indian scientists from physics, chemistry, various streams of engineering, computational and data sciences to facilitate a cross-disciplinary framework for neuroscience research. This talent pool will be nurtured through collaborations with a global network of leading neuroscience institutions, and exchange/visiting faculty programs.
Focus on
Research Areas

CHINTA
Neurodegenerative and Neuropsychiatric diseases are global public health threats. Absence of interdisciplinary approach is one of the main reason for failure to discover new medicines and therapies to improve the quality of life. The core research area of CHINTA focuses on this translational neuroscience from discovery to delivery.
Publications
CHINTA plans to come up with insightful publications based on its researches and experiments, which will broaden the knowledge of the global scientific and medical community and help in coming up with new approaches to translational neuroscience.
View AllGlimpse of our
Campus & Facilities
Sumantra “Shona” Chattarji
Director, CHINTA

Professor Sumantra "Shona" Chattarji is the Director of CHINTA, TCG CREST. He is also a Visiting Professor of Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain, University of Edinburgh, UK. Before joining CREST, he was a Senior Professor of national Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India.
Read MoreEric Klann
Scientific Advisory Board

Eric Klann is an American neuroscientist who studies how molecular signaling, synaptic plasticity, and behavior are altered in developmental disability, autism, aging, psychiatric disorders, and Alzheimer's disease. He is a Professor at the Center for Neural Science, New York University
Read MoreFrancis Lee
Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Francis Lee is an accomplished neurobiologist and psychiatrist studying the molecular basis of mood and anxiety disorders, with the goal of understanding why many of them emerge during the transition from childhood to adolescence. He is the Chair, Dept. of Psychiatry & Dean, Weill-Cornell Medical School.
Read MoreGregory Quirk
Scientific Advisory Board

Gregory Quirk Supervising Scientist, National Institutes of Health, Philippines Scientific Advisory Board, CHINTA
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