Kolkata: A Bengali scientist settled in Switzerland has been awarded for his landmark invention on the influenza virus infection. Indranil Banerjee and his team have invented a novel molecular pathway that the influenza virus uses to infect the host cell. The finding has paved way for a completely new antiviral strategy.Banerjee, a presidential fellow at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, received the Pfizer Research Award last Thursday. He shared the award with Japanese co-workers Yohei Yamauchi and Yasuki Miyake.Talking to TOI, Banerjee explained, "Influenza virus threats public health by causing severe morbidity. A recent example is the swine flu, which caused the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak. Due to high mutation rate, new strains of viruses emerge and become drug-resistant and require vaccine reformulation. Often, the vaccines and available treatment become ineffective due to the emergence of new strains. So, many affected people die due to the lack of effective medication."The Pfizer Award is one of the most prestigious awards in medicine in Europe. I am happy to be the first Bengali to have received this prestigious award."To circumvent the problem of viral mutability, the scientists targeted 'traitor' human genes that the virus uses during the course of its infection. When silenced, the genes do not affect the normal functioning of the cell.The advantage of temporarily silencing human genes with drugs is that, unlike viral genes, they do not undergo mutation in natural conditions. So, instead of targeting the virus itself, one targets the 'insider' host genes, which help the virus to enter the cells without anticipating the danger this deadly virus can potentially bring in.Overall, flu virus uses a 'Trojan Horse' strategy in which the victim (human cell) assists the intruder (flu virus). As a consequence, the virus hijacks the key cellular machineries and turn the cell into a 'virus factory' for its spread.The scientists identified some key genes that the virus needs during its cellular entry before it can hijack the cellular machineries. "Targeting these genes with drugs could provide a robust therapy to stop the viral infection and spread," said Banerjee.Banerjee, who grew up in Kolkata's Sikddar Bagan Street, did his MTech in bioengineering from IIT-Kanpur . He joined the lab of Prof Ari Helenius at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) for his doctoral studies.Working there, Banerjee and his fellow researchers found out that the virus takes advantage of the waste-disposal machinery of the host cell to release its genome for infection. The research work was published in 'Science' journal in 2014. Currently he is developing cell-based therapies for neurological disorders.ETH Zurich is among the top ten universities in the world along with Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Caltech, Princeton Imperial College London, and Chicago, boasting of 21 Nobel Prizes, awarded to its students or professors, the most famous of was Albert Einstein.