Dr. Jita (Jitakshi) De
M.D. (Medical Doctor)
M.L.S. (Master of Legal Studies in Healthcare Law)
Founding Pathologist and Scientist Entrepreneur
Dr. Jitakshi De received her undergraduate education at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she earned a Bachelors of Science in Biology with Highest Honors (class of 1994). For her undergraduate research thesis, she identified kinetochore mutants in S. cerevisiae yeast by applying the dicentric chromosome breakage assay. She pursued her medical education at Duke University (class of 1999). She was a recipient of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Student Research Fellowship (’97-’98) for research at the Laboratory of Signal Transduction at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. There, she discovered an unusual CCCH class of zinc finger protein in Xenopus laevis.
Dr. De pursued post doctoral studies at the Kenan Institute of Engineering, Technology, and Science of North Carolina State University (in collaboration with researchers at the Sandia National Laboratory). This led to the discovery of target-specific binding peptides for the Staphylococcal bacterial toxin from a combinatorial (bead-based) synthetic hexamer peptide library. In further post-doctoral research at the Center of Biomedical Inventions (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center), De demonstrated targeted elimination of Mycoplasma infection from mammalian cell cultures, using a magnetic bead-conjugated capture peptide (previously identified from a 20-mer bacteriophage peptide library).
Dr. De completed her pathology residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and subsequently her Hematopathology fellowship at the University of Michigan in 2009. After practicing hematopathology in various commercial laboratory settings, she pursued graduate studies in U.S. Healthcare Law online and attained a Master of Legal Studies (M.L.S.) from The University of Oklahoma (2017-18).
Jita De, MD, MLS has more than 10 years of experience in the practice of pathology, with specialization in the diagnosis of blood and bone marrow malignancies. She has served in leadership roles for moderate and high complexity laboratory testing. Dr. De is an expert in blood and bone marrow pathology, with analysis and interpretation of flow cytometry data. Her detailed case studies and research in acute and chronic leukemias, myeloid malignancies, classical Hodgkin lymphoma, and non-Hodgkin B cell lymphoma have been published in peer-reviewed abstracts and publications, and presented in numerous national and international meetings.
Dr. De is a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Pathology (ASCP) and the College of American Pathologists.
