Pritesh is originally from Mumbai but moved to the United States in 2009 after completing a bachelor’s degree in biotechnology from Dr. D.Y. Patil University in India. Pritesh earned an MS in Biology at Georgia State University and a PhD in Medical Sciences from University of Florida. Thereafter, Pritesh joined the laboratory of Dr. Michael S. Diamond at Washington University in St. Louis as a Post-doctoral Research Associate.
In the Diamond Laboratory, Pritesh’s central project involved examining the impact of intestinal helminth coinfection on flavivirus pathogenesis. Pritesh discovered that activation of tuft cell-IL-4R circuit in the intestine has detrimental consequences in the context of neurotropic flavivirus infection. Specifically, Pritesh showed that flavivirus infection of enteric neurons, in the setting of a type 2 immune response due to helminths, IL-25 and IL-4 signaling, impairs intestinal integrity, blunts antiviral CD8+ T cell responses and compromises host survival. Currently, Pritesh is an Instructor in the Department of Medicine and continues to examine the impact of intestinal helminth coinfection on other viral pathogens and on vaccine responses. Pritesh is also involved in training graduate students in the laboratory and promoting collaborations with other academic laboratories in Washington University.