Meaning emerges
from many small signals.
physician-scientist · modeler · reluctant writer
Reading disease as a system, where a single readout means little but the pattern across thousands means everything.
microbiome
& disease
& disease
immuno-
oncology
oncology
pharmacometrics
· QSP
· QSP
subthreshold signals
Ideas not yet fired
I'm drawn to problems where biology behaves like a system: where the interesting signal lives in the interactions, not the parts, and a single readout means almost nothing on its own.
This section is the holding pen. Ideas below threshold, not yet fired, kept here as themes rather than protocols. Some will become studies. Most will stay noise. That's the base rate, and I'm fine with it.
signal 01
Mechanism, then model
Trials that pair clinical endpoints with biomarkers answer two questions at once: whether an intervention works, and why.
signal 02
Low-cost molecules, hard endpoints
Off-patent, inexpensive therapeutics rarely receive rigorous evaluation. They deserve adequately powered trials against endpoints that matter clinically.
signal 03
The gut as a bioreactor
An electrochemical system with inputs, outputs, and operating conditions. Redox and pH select the microbial communities that shape mucosal disease.
signal 04
PK-guided precision medicine
Therapeutic drug monitoring and population pharmacokinetic models to individualize dosing: precision medicine grounded in drug exposure, not genomics alone.
signal 05
potentiating
signal 06
summating
These are intentionally brief: the framing is public, the working detail is not. If one of them intersects with your research, I welcome the conversation.
research
Selected work
Where the signals crossed threshold. One published map, one oncobiome, one trial in flight.
featured · microbiome & disease
Mapping the microbiome-redox spectrum in chronic gastritis
Peptic ulcers are usually read through pH. We read them through redox instead: mapping microbial signatures in ulcer versus non-ulcer dyspepsia against the redox potential of their micro-environment, and proposing a Microbial-Redox Index as a diagnostic handle and a route to redox-targeted pre- and probiotics.
Microbiome-linked transcriptomic signatures in NMIBC
Bladder tumors live in constant contact with their own microbial neighbourhood. Meta-transcriptomics of the native oncobiome in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, linked to host transcriptional programs, a step toward personalized uro-oncology. Urologic Oncology, 2026.
read →
DREAM-BiG: adjunctive magnesium bisglycinate in depression
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, designed and run as my MD thesis. Clinical scales paired with mechanistic biomarkers, BDNF, magnesium, glycine, to ask not just whether it works but why.
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noise
Noise
Half-formed takes, quick findings, and things I'm reading. Signal's overrated.
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about
Abhishek Akella
I was drawn to research by a simple fascination: the gut as a living ecosystem, not a static organ. My pursuit began at the bench rather than the classroom, in the early years of my MBBS, as an undergraduate research assistant in a microbiome lab.
Four years of that curiosity became a published map of the microbiome-redox spectrum in chronic gastritis. It taught me to read clinical problems as systems-level puzzles rather than single-pathway deficits.
Working in acute care showed me the other side of the equation: patients whose suffering outran the available therapeutics. That duality, the restlessness of a clinician and the rigor of a bench scientist, is what pulled me into MD Pharmacology. The discipline rewards parallel thinking: a receptor mechanism to a clinical outcome, a nutrient deficiency to a neurotransmitter imbalance.
My MD thesis, the DREAM-BiG trial (Depression REsponse to Adjunctive Magnesium Bis Glycinate), lives exactly there: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial pairing clinical scales with biomarkers to move past symptom counting toward why an intervention works.
As an early-career scientist, I aim to build solutions matched to the cause and the scale of the problem, bridging science from lab to bedside.
tap to resolve