Senior Scientist, Structural Biology Unit, NII, New Delhi
Consultant, Jubilant Drug Discovery , Bangalore
Dr. Inder Verma Professor - American Cancer Society & Laboratory of Genetics
Dr Inder M. Verma, a professor in the Laboratory of Genetics and American Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Biology, is one of the world's leading authorities on the development of viruses for gene therapy vectors. Dr. Verma uses genetically engineered viruses to insert new genes into cells that can then be returned to the body, where they produce the essential protein whose absence causes disease.
Dr. Verma and Salk colleagues developed a gene therapy vector, based on a stripped-down version of HIV, that can deliver genes to non-dividing cells, which constitute the majority of the cells in our bodies. They have used this vector successfully to deliver the clotting factor gene to laboratory animals and to transfer a therapeutic gene to retinal cells to mice with an inborn deficiency. Dr. Verma's group is also studying two genes implicated in familial breast cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2, and recently demonstrated that their action is linked to the cell's division cycle and that BRCA1 regulates gene activity.
Prof. K.Vijayraghavan Director, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore
Prof. K. Vijayraghavan is the Director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore India. His main interests are in the area of the formation of the adult indirect flight muscles and also the patterning of other adult tissues, the nervous system and the wing blade in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Prof. Vijayraghavan's pre-doctoral studies were at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and doctoral work at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India and post-doctoral work at California Institute of Technology, USA.
Prof. A. S.Kolaskar Vice Chancellor, University of Pune
Prof. A.S. Kolaskar is the Vice Chancellor of University of Pune, India. He has over 20 years of experience as a researcher in Bioinformatics. For the last 13 years he served as a professor and Director of Bioinformatics Centre at University of Pune and recently as the Director, Bioinformatics, ATCC, USA. His main research interests are in the area of theoretical molecular biophysics. He has published more than 50 research papers in reviewed journals and has edited books and monographs. He is actively involved in international scientific organizations.
Prof. Shankar Subramaniam Professor, Bioengineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego
Prof. Shankar Subramaniam is currently Professor of Bioengineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. He also holds a joint appointment at the San Diego Supercomputing Centre. Before he moved to UCSD (1999), he was the Director of the computational biology group at the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and a Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular and Integrative Physiology, Chemical Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University. His present research focus is in computational Biology. These include web-based approaches to bioinformatics.
Prof. N.Srinivasan Faculty member, Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
Prof. N. Srinivasan is a faculty member at the Molecular Biophysics Unit of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He is also an International Senior Fellow of the Welcome Trust, London and Honorary Research Fellow of the Birkbeck College, London. His main research interests are comparative modeling of protein structures, genome analysis and signal transduction. He was at the University of Cambridge, Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research, London. At the Department of Crystallography, Birkbeck College, he worked in the areas of protein modeling and signal transduction.
Dr. Kuriyan Chancellor's Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Kuriyan is a Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He received a B.S. degree in chemistry from Juniata College, Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with Gregory Petsko and Martin Karplus (Harvard University) on the dynamics of proteins. He continued with Martin Karplus and Greg Petsko for a year and then moved to the Rockefeller University as Assistant Professor and University Fellow, where he remained for 14 years. Dr. Kuriyan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received the 2005 Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences.
John Kuriyan is interested in the structure and mechanism of the enzymes and molecular switches that carry out cellular signal transduction and DNA replication. His laboratory uses x-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structures of proteins involved in signaling and replication, as well as biochemical, biophysical, and computational analyses to elucidate mechanisms.
Dr. Dinakar Salunke Senior Scientist, Structural Biology Unit, National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi
Dr. Dinakar Salunke is a Senior Scientist at the Structural Biology Unit of the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi. His main focus of research is on the elucidation of the structural basis of functional mimicry and the structural biology of immune recognition. These studies have been further extended for developing designer immune epitopes by exploiting the structural knowledge of immune recognition. Structural issues pertaining to innate immunity are also being addressed. A distinguishing characteristic of his work has been the judicious combination of structural, biochemical and immunological techniques. He has co-authored more than 60 research articles and is a recipient of various national and international awards for his research.
Dr. VN Balaji Consultant, Jubilant Drug Discovery , Bangalore
Dr. VN Balaji received his Ph.D in Molecular Biophysics in 1981 from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He did his Post-doctoral research at Department of Chemistry, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA (1981-83). He has over 3 decades of pharmaceutical industrial experience (from molecular design to scientific management). He worked at Lederle Laboratories (Pearl River, NY, USA), Allergan Pharmaceuticals (Irvine, CA, USA), Immuno Pharmaceuticals (San Diego, CA, USA), Monsanto (St. Louis, Missouri, USA and R&D Centre, Bangalore, India) and Jubilant Biosys (Bangalore, India). In 2001, he co-founded Jubilant Biosys, Bangalore, India and mentored to establish state-of-the-art drug discovery laboratory including informatics, high throughput screening, molecular design, structural biology, invitro and invivo biology, DMPK etc. He has co-authored more than 40 publications and 20 patents. He contributed to the molecular design of the anti-acne drug “Tazaroc” marketed by Allergan Pharmaceuticals. He initiated Endothelin antagonist programme at Immuno Pharmaceuticals and contributed to the molecular design of anti-hypertensive drug “Thelin”. He mentored several successful drug discovery collaboration initiatives. Dr. Balaji was formally retired from his services on 31st March 2012 as the Chief Scientific Mentor of Jubilant Biosys and re-appointed as member of the Scientific Advisory Board w e f 1st April 2012. He is a member of more than 8 national and international organizations including Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). He is a member of Editorial Advisory Board -Chemical Biology & Drug Design.
