India-US Relations Blog

USINPAC applauds Indian American surgeon Amit Patel on his pioneering work of developing a procedure called retrograde gene therapy

Leave a comment

One of the world’s leading cardiothoracic surgeons, Amit N. Patel of the University of Utah, is in the news for a pioneering procedure called retrograde gene therapy. The procedure he developed delivers stem cells to the heart, repairing damaged muscle and arteries in the most minimally invasive way possible.

“It’s incredible. Imagine having a heart procedure that can potentially regenerate or rejuvenate your heart muscle — and it’s done as an outpatient procedure,” the Indian American physician said in a statement.
Patel — an educator, inventor, researcher, and clinician already considered a superstar within his field — hit the headlines Nov. 26 after successfully performing surgery at University of Utah Hospital on actor Ernie Lively, the father of “Gossip Girl” star Blake Lively.
Lively became the first patient in the world to undergo retrograde gene therapy after the procedure’s recent FDA approval.
Patel used a minimally invasive technique to insert a catheter through Lively’s main cardiac vein, or coronary sinus. He then inflated a balloon to block blood flow out of the heart so that he could administer a very high dose of gene therapy — pure human DNA — directly into the heart.
This particular DNA, called stromal cell-derived factor 1, or SDF-1, is a naturally occurring substance in the body. It provides a sort of “homing beacon” for the patient’s body to send its own stem cells to go to the site of an injury. Another way the therapy is unique is that this particular therapy does not use viruses, noted Patel.
“The genes basically act like a light house with a bright signal,” Patel said in a University of Utah press release. “They say, ‘How can we help the ships that need to get to the port — which is the heart — get there?’
“When the signal, or the ‘light,’ from the SDF-1, which is that gene, shows up, the stem cells from not inside your own heart and from those that circulate from your blood and bone marrow all get attracted to the heart which is injured, and they bring reinforcements to make it stronger and pump more efficiently.”
Patel is an associate professor in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine, and director of Clinical Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering at the University of Utah.


According to a press release from the University of Utah, Patel has been investigating cell and gene-based therapies for the treatment of heart disease for 12 years. More than 6 million people in the U.S. are dealing with heart failure, and Patel wanted to develop a way to treat it before patients would have to turn to drastic and expensive measures such as a heart transplant or an artificial heart.
“This is one of the great moments in biological therapy for the heart,” Patel said in the press release. “We are providing options for patients who have no possible solutions. This is one of the safest and most reproducible therapies out there for these very sick patients.”
The versatile scientist has many clinical interests, including heart surgery for coronary disease; valve repair and replacement; heart failure; aortic surgery and stent grafts. As a thoracic surgeon, he is an expert in lung and esophageal surgery, and is known for his work in thoracic oncology that includes minimally invasive lung resections and hyperthermic chemotherapy, a form of therapy for mesothelioma that calls for heating a solution of chemotherapeutic drugs for better absorption.
Patel has recently developed a stem cell spray for rapid healing of heart surgery and burns, and he is currently working on a treatment for Type 2 Diabetes. He is now training other physicians around the U.S. in retrograde gene therapy, and is overseeing a trial of the procedure with 72 patients.

Source: IndiaWest

India-US Relations Blog

USINPAC congratulates Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri on her new novel ‘The Lowland’ being listed fourth in Time magazine’s top ten books of fiction in 2013

Leave a comment

Pulitzer Prize winning Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri’s new novel, “The Lowland”, set in Kolkata of the 1960s, has been listed fourth in Time magazine’s top ten books of fiction in 2013.
Describing it as “a life-spanning novel about two brothers from Calcutta,” Time said: “Lahiri’s graceful, measured prose ticks off the years and registers, precisely and with deep pathos, the strange, surprising, melancholy and very occasionally wonderful changes that time wreaks on us all.”
“Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson, “Tenth of December” by George Saunders and “The Flamethrowers” by Rachel Kushner take the top three slots ahead of Lahiri’s novel.
New York Times also lists “The Lowland” among 100 Notable Books of 2013. “After his radical brother is killed, an Indian scientist brings his widow to join him in America in Lahiri’s efficiently written novel,” it notes.

Indian-American author Anita Raghavan’s “The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund” too makes it to the newspaper’s 100 in nonfiction category.

“Indian-Americans populate every aspect of this meticulously reported true-life business thriller,” it notes.
Lahiri last month failed to win the 2013 US National Book Award in fiction losing out to author James McBride for “The Good Lord Bird”, about the journey of a young slave in the 1850s.
London-born daughter of immigrants from West Bengal, 46-year-old Lahiri, who lives in New York’s Brooklyn had also lost out on the prestigious Man Booker Prize for contemporary fiction writers from the Commonwealth and Ireland.
She is the author of three previous books. Her debut collection of stories, “Interpreter of Maladies”, won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Source: IBNlive.in.com

Indian-Americans and U.S. Politics Blog

The Rise of Indian-American Leaders in the American Political Scene

Leave a comment

This year, we witnessed the emergence and political victories of many Indian-American leaders in the current American political scene. They have emerged leaders from diverse educational and professional backgrounds although with something in common: the urge and the mission to serve the community at large. This blog post highlights the achievements of some of these leaders who have consistently made an impact to their multi-cultural communities in the U.S. These leaders also reveal an insight into their commitments in their chosen disciplines. Sapana S. Shah won a berth in the Edison Municipal Council of New Jersey. She has been has been working with the Edison Board of Education since 2011. The young attorney at law specializes in litigation matters relating to personal injury, municipal court matters, criminal matters, employment discrimination, business & commercial litigation, and family law.


This year, Raj Mukherji, a former Deputy Mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey won the State Assembly elections to New Jersey’s 33rd Legislative District. He was part of the American military intelligence after he enlisted in the Marines post the 9/11 attacks; he is known for his philanthropic activities too. He attended the University of Pennsylvania from where he earned a Master’s degree. He now joins the state assembly post with fellow Indian American Upendra Chivukula in New Jersey.
Upendra Chivukula is the first South-Asian American in the 120-member state legislature and he is also the highest ranking South-Asian elected to office in New Jersey. He has been a member of the New Jersey state assembly since 2002. He is the first Indian-American to be elected to the New Jersey General Assembly and the fourth Indian-American to be elected to the state office. He has also been a recipient of awards including New Jersey Technology Council’s Legislative Advocate for Technology Award, NJ Small Business Development Centers’ Legislative Award, induction into the High-Tech Hall of Fame, New Jersey Policy Research Organization’s – Leader of Innovation, NJ Small Business Development Centers’ Legislator of the Year Award, NAACP Edison/Metuchen Branch – Adam Clayton Powell Award, and the ADL – Americanism Award.
This November, Latha Mangipudi won the special elections for State Representative in Hillsborough District 35 in New Hampshire by a margin of 59%-41%. She is a trained Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) by profession and she is known for her role in the field of education at Nashua, where she resides with her family. She also works with people with special needs and she is member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).
Town Councilman, entrepreneur, and business development executive Steve Rao emerged winner in the Morrisville City Council election in North Carolina this year. He is now the only Indian-American in the Council and was the only incumbent to return to office.

Immigration Blog

The Impact of Illegal Immigration in the U.S.

Leave a comment

The impact of illegal immigration in the U.S. has been a topic of widespread speculation and debate for some time now. With context to what attracts illegal immigrants to the U.S. is the search for greener pastures and economic opportunities; illegal aliens or illegal immigrants to the U.S. come from all parts of the world. Despite the enforcement and the initiation of tougher measures by the U.S. immigration and other authorities to limit illegal immigration, the former’s desire to reach America is so strong that nothing in the world can dissuade them from not doing so. As the rest of it goes, they settle for the lowest wages possible and work in industries including construction, agriculture, and food-processing. Here lies the catch about why there is a demand for illegal immigrants: a globalized economy, the requirement for low-skilled labor at times of seasonal employment, the lack of a robust verifying mechanism for employers in the U.S. while hiring foreign workers, and the availability of labor at very low wages as compared to what American workers quote or demand. Further the American immigration policies have limited provisions for legal and permanent economic migration in the case of low-skilled workers. It is important to note that the American education system creates a small segment of people who are either high-school dropouts or have doctorates, thereby leaving a gap that needs to be filled by foreign workers. Therefore there is a dearth of workers required to complete seasonal low-skilled jobs or very high-skilled jobs.

George J. Borjas, economist and professor at Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School summarizes the impact of immigration as – “The laws of supply and demand imply that, other things being equal, an increase in the number of low-skilled immigrants will lower the wages of comparable native workers, at least in the short run, because they now face stiffer competition in the labor market. In contrast, high-skilled workers may gain from the influx of immigrant labor. Not only will they pay less for the services these laborers provide, such as painting the house and mowing the lawn, but by hiring immigrant workers they will be able to specialize in producing the goods and services to which their skills are better suited.” This summarizes the fact that today with the transition of most of the world economy from manufacturing to an economy that is knowledge-based, it has provided for mass immigration. This is how low-skilled labor is fulfilled by immigrant workers in the U.S. Most of them take up these jobs as they fetch higher wages than what they would earn in their home countries. Furthermore, there is also the ‘network-effect’ in which immigrants in the U.S. bring in more immigrants from their home countries due to whom the market for low-skilled labor in the U.S. has become very competitive. There are some American states that are more volatile in terms of the influx of illegal immigration; however the numbers are catching up in the other states. Although certain reports on immigration state that the number of illegal immigrants to the U.S. has dwindled, the U.S. market has fewer jobs right now and it is rife with stiff competition. However there is the other side of the opinion; a New York Times/CBS News Poll report revealed that 53 percent of Americans thought that ‘illegal immigrants mostly take the jobs Americans don’t want’ and that ‘without illegal immigration labor, it would almost certainly not be possible to produce the same volume of food in the country’. Some banking corporations wanted to initiate mortgage for illegal immigrants to attract investments; however that sort of initiation and the uncertainty of an unpredictable loom large. The debate continues and time will tell.

India-US Relations Blog

USINPAC congratulates Indian American Neeraj Sahai on his appointment as President of Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, the world’s largest ratings firm

Leave a comment

A top Indian-American executive at Citigroup has been appointed president of Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services , the world’s largest ratings firm.

Neeraj Sahai, 56, will assume his new role at S&P from January 6, 2014, financial intelligence company McGraw Hill Financial said in a statement in New York.

Sahai, who did his master’s in economics from the University of Delhi, is currently head of Citi’s Securities and Fund Services business and also acts as chief fiduciary officer of Citigroup. He succeeds Douglas Peterson, who became president and chief executive officer of McGraw Hill Financial on November 1.

Peterson has taken over as chief executive of the parent company earlier this month. Sahai has significant experience serving global capital markets.

His insights, leadership and background in driving growth, as well as in risk, control and governance will be enormously valuable to Standard & Poor’s Rating Services , to market participants and to credit markets, Peterson said.

He added that as debt markets expand around the world to finance the increasing demand for development and infrastructure projects, S&P and its 1,400analysts would offer globally comparable measures of relative credit risk.

“I am eager to get started, to work alongside S&P’s deeply talented employees and to build on the progress Doug and the management team have achieved,” said Sahai.

In his previous role at Citi, Sahai significantly grew the business, which offers securities services to investors, issuers and intermediaries.

From 2002 to 2005, he was chief financial officer of Citi’s Global Transaction Services and before that has served in a range of other roles with Citi in the US and early in his career he held a number of positions of increasing responsibility with Citi in India.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, part of McGraw Hill Financial, is the world’s leading provider of independent credit risk research. It publishes more than a million credit ratings on debt issued by sovereign, municipal, corporate and financial sector entities. McGraw Hill Financial’s brands include the Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, S&P Capital IQ and S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Source: Business Today