U. C. Chaturvedi

Umesh Chandra Chaturvedi (2 March 1939 – 28 December 2021) was an Indian virologist, immunologist, medical microbiologist, CSIR Emeritus Scientist and a former chairman of the Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Corporation. The founder head of the department of microbiology at King George's Medical University, he is known for his studies on Dengue virus infection. Chaturvedi is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian National Science Academy as well as the Royal College of Pathologists and National Academy of Medical Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 1981.

Biography U. C. Chaturvedi, born on 2 March 1939 at the Unnao, an industrial city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to Chandra and Satya Prakash Chaturvedi, completed his early college education at Government Inter College, Etawah in 1956, before graduating in medicine from King George's Medical University (then known as King George's Medical College) in 1961. and on his return to India, became associated with Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (then known as Industrial Toxicology Research Centre) in Lucknow where he continued his researches as an emeritus scientist of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Subsequently, he chaired Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Corporation, (BIBCOL) a Government of India undertaking involved in the manufacture of oral Polio vaccines, Zinc tablets and kits for the management of Diarrhea. He served BIBCOL till 2006 when he was succeeded by Virander Singh Chauhan.

Chaturvedi is married to Uma and the couple has two daughters, Preeti and Pratibha and a son, Jai Deep. The family lives in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. With the help of his studies on the pathogenesis of Dengue fever, he demonstrated that T helper cell-Type II cytokine receptor causes severity of the disease and he termed the incidence as Cytokine Tsunami, as revealed in articles and an editorial written by him in Indian Journal of Medical Research.

Chaturvedi elucidated the pathogenesis of dengue fever by proposing how virus-infected macrophages incited cytotoxic factor (CF) production in CD4+ T cells which accelerated production of free radicals, nitrite, reactive oxygen and peroxynitrite. He has documented his researches by way of over 255 articles in per-reviewed journals and the online article repository of the Indian Academy of Sciences has listed 216 of them. Besides, he has contributed chapters to books published by others and his work has been cited by a number of authors and researchers. He has also delivered invited or keynote speeches and has guided a number of master's and doctoral scholars in their studies.

On the academic front, he was the founder head of the Department of Microbiology at King George Medical College and his contributions have been reported in the establishment of a viral diagnostic laboratory at Aligarh Muslim University. He has been associated with many Government of India agencies such as Indian Council of Medical Research, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and sat in the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National AIDS Research Institute during 2003–04. He has been a member of the Task Force on Infectious Disease Biology of the Department of Biotechnology and represented India in the General Assembly of the International Federation of Tropical Medicine during 1984–85. He held the position of a treasurer of the Indian Association of Pathologists and Microbiologists from 1976 to 1980 and served as its president in 1988. He has also served as a member of the editorial boards of African Journal of Clinical and Experimental Immunology, Indian Journal of Medical Research and the Indian Journal of Medical Microbiology and has served as the peer reviewer of Dengue Bulletin, published by the South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO) of the World Health Organization.

Awards and honors Chaturvedi received the Shakuntala Amirchand Prize for the young scientists from the Indian Council of Medical Research in 1969; ICMR honored him again a decade later with the 1979 J. B. Srivastava Award. He received the Best Teacher Award of the King George Medical University in 1989 and the Senior Scientist Award of the National Institute of Immunology a year later,

The National Academy of Medical Sciences elected him as a fellow in 1983 and three years later, he became a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. The year 1987 brought him two elected fellowships; that of the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India. He is also a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (1986), American Academy of Microbiologists (1988) The award orations delivered by him include B. K. Aikat Oration Award by Indian Association of Pathologists and Microbiologists in 1989 and T. S. Tirumurti Award lecture of the Indian National Science Academy in 2007.

Selected bibliography Chapters

Articles