Dr. Nanduri Received PhD in Organic Chemistry from Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Prasanthinilayam, A.P. India in the year 1991 and continued as a faculty for three years. Moved on to the R & D centre of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories in the year 1995 and spent close to 13 years in various positions of increasing responsibilities. Led and managed various drug discovery programmes of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories in the areas of oncology and metabolic disorders as Senior Director, Medicinal Chemistry. Subsequently, joined Biocon BMS Research Centre, Bangalore, as Chief Scientific Manager. Later on moved to Aurigene Discovery Technologies Ltd., (a subsidiary of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories) as Research Director, Medicinal Chemistry in 2008. Led a number of integrated drug discovery programmes in the area of Oncology in collaboration with various pharmaceutical companies. His recent industrial assignment has been with Albany Molecular Research (AMRI), Hyderabad Research Centre as Director, Medicinal Chemistry.
Dr. Manoj Dandekar, Assistant Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
For the past 15 years, Dr. Dandekar has been working in the neuroscience field. After completing his Ph.D. in the Faculty of Medicine (2009), he worked in the pharmaceutical drug discovery industry (2009-2016). Then for next 4 years, he was associated with the University of Texas Health Science Center and Houston Methodist Research Institute in Houston as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, to strengthen his research background and become an independent researcher. His research interest is on investigating the neuropathology of CNS disorders, drug screening, and brain injury using an in-vivo and in-vitro approaches. His recent research also focused on microbiome-gut-brain axis.
Dr. Jitender Madan, Associate Professor
Department of Pharmaceutics
Dr. Jitender Madan obtained his M.Pharmacy from Dr. Harisingh Gaur University, Saugar and Ph.D (Pharmaceutical Sciences) from Bundelkhand University, Jhansi. He also worked as Postdoctoral Fellow in Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA in Cancer Nanobiology. Currently, Dr. Madan is associated with Department of Pharmaceutics, NIPER, Hyderabad and continuing academic research in the area of topical drug delivery systems, vaccine delivery, and cancer nanobiology.
Dr. Rajesh Sonti, Assistant Professor
Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis
During his Ph.D. at IISC-Bangalore with Prof. P. Balaram, he has worked on designed and natural peptides that are hybrid beta-sheets, modified alpha-helices, and cyclic disulfide-bonded peptides. He has done the conformational analysis of several peptides and solved 23 structures of peptides by solution NMR. In Biozentrum, Basel-Switzerland, he worked with the protein, Abelson tyrosine kinase involved in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia in the group of Prof. Stephan Grzesiek. He tested the interaction of FDA-approved drugs, e.g., Gleevec (Novartis), Tasigna (Novartis), Sprycel (Bristol-Myers Squibb), Iclusig (ARIAD Pharmaceuticals), and Inlyta (Pfizer) that bind at the ATP binding site in a solution using NMR spectroscopy. These studies lead to the identification mechanism of Abl disassembled state upon binding of certain drugs from the assembled state. He characterized activities of several drug resistant mutants (‘gatekeeper,’ completely activated P242E/P249E), assessed their conformations, probed interdomain dynamics by 15N relaxation studies. At EPFL Laussane-Switzerland in the group of Prof. Rolf Gruetter, worked on the determination of lactate concentrations in the mice plasma and analyzed the fragmental labelling, 13C isotope enrichment by NMR. Furthermore, he worked on determining the concentrations of metabolites in mice cortex, hippocampus, and striatum regions using in vivo 9T MRS magnet. Further, European Centre of Pharmaceutical Medicine (ECPM-DAS) course at the University of Basel enhanced my knowledge and understanding of pharmaceutical medicine. With the best training and world-class experience received, I have started my career at NIPER-Hyderabad. The scientific goal of my research is the application of analytical techniques such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), High resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) for the elucidation of structure, and dynamics of peptides with a particular emphasis on understanding conformational diversity of novel conopeptides as a core area. The group is also interested in drug-drug interactions, metabolism of herbal drugs and drug stability studies. We collaborate with several scientists and provide analytical support in NIPER and outside. Further, we actively engage in consultancy projects for the structure elucidation of APIs and higher-order structure determination of biosimilars for pharmaceutical companies.
Dr. Saurabh Srivastava, Associate Professor
Department of Regulatory Affairs
Dr. Saurabh Srivastava has pursued his Masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences from “Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, Rajasthan and earned his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics from “Panjab University, Chandigarh”. He carries more than 17 years of profound industrial and research experience working with several Pharmaceutical R&Ds, including IPCA labs, Mumbai, Wockhardt research centre, Aurangabad and His latest stint was with Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad, as Tech Lead for development and commercialization of various NDA and ANDA based products for different regulated markets. Subsequently, he joined as an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutics, NIPER-Hyderabad. Presently he is heading the Department of Pharmaceutics and acting as a Member (Board of Governors; NIPER-Hyderabad), Member (Board of Directors; AVISHKARAN-BIRAC-BioNEST of NIPER Hyderabad), Associate Dean, (Academics) and Chairperson, Board of Studies & Research at NIPER Hyderabad.
His areas of research interest include development and optimization of Industrially viable, feasible and scalable “Differentiated formulations; (505(b)2”, through utilization of “Micro/Nanostructured” Targeted drug deliveries along with Novel platform technologies, including “Amorphous solid dispersion”, “Fluidized bed processing”, “Particle coating” (Wurster process), “Pellet based controlled drug deliveries” “Compression coating”, Multiple Unit Particulate Systems (MUPS), “Osmotic drug deliveries” and “Lipid based drug carriers” for the purpose of “Bioavailability enhancement”, “Food effect minimization”, “Repurposing/New Indication”, “Synergism for FDCs”, “Dose/Dosing frequency reduction”. His major therapeutic area of research is “Neurodegenerative disorders”, “Dermal diseases”, “Colon targeting/GI disorders” and “Prostate/Breast Cancer”. He has mentored 20+ Masters Research scholars and 11 PhD Research scholars are carrying out their Doctoral research under his supervision. He along with his research team is actively involved in execution of several Industrial and Govt. aided research projects for the establishment of novel differentiated products. He has been awarded several appreciation and special recognition awards from Dr. Reddy’s laboratories for his outstanding contribution to research and development along with the International Travel grant from CSIR, New Delhi. He has 02 “Commercial Products”, 15+ “International and National Patents”, 02 Edited book, 25+ Book chapters along with 75+ research publications in Journals of International repute with 1500+ citations further to his credit.
Dr. B. Lakshmi, Assistant Professor
Department of Pharmaceutical Management
A Commerce graduate with an MBA (Finance). She is National Stock Exchange Certified (NCFM) in Derivatives (Dealers), Capital Markets (Dealers), Depositories, Financial Markets modules. She has about 12 years working experience in industry, research and academics. During her tenure at Centre for Urban Governance, Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) she had coordinated with UNICEF - India, Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation, Government of India (GoI) for the launch of ‘WinS Leadership Course’ for government officials responsible for School Sanitation.
Dr. Vasundhra Bhandari, Assistant Professor
Department of Pharmacoinformatics and Department of Biopharmaceuticals
Pharmacogenomics and Precision Medicine, Antimicrobial Resistance and Drug discovery
Dr. Bhandari’s group is interested in new drug discovery, repurposing of drugs and understanding their novel mechanism of resistance. Her group is also interested to identify the interindividual variability against a treatment or drug deciphering a path to precision medicine. During her PhD and Postdoctoral work, she has identified novel drug targets and worked towards identifying the drug resistance mechanism operative in important human pathogens. Her lab is well funded with extramural grant support from government and private agencies.
At NIPER, she intends to use functional genomics/proteomics, epigenetics and gene editing tools for answering her research questions.
Dr. Amit Asthana, Associate Professor
Department of Medical Devices
Dr. Asthana has more than 21 years of post-doctoral experience in the field of biomaterials, micro/nanotechnology, microfluidics device designing, fabrication and characterization, hot embossing, cleanroom operations, and paper-microfluidics. He has worked at Institutes and Universities of International fame such as the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Institute Curie, France; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA; Chungnam National University, South Korea; and University of Queensland, Australia.
Dr. Asthana is a Fellow of the Telangana Academy of Science. He is the recipient of many fellowships including S.R.F. (C.S.I.R., India), Curie Fellowship (France), Brainpool Fellowship (KRF, South Korea), and Ramalingaswami Return Fellowship (DBT, India) . Dr. Asthana has many publications in journals of international repute and international conferences apart from 04 Indian and PCT patents.
His research interests include paper-based microfluidic devices and their applications in clinical diagnosis, 3D cell culture, drug screening, and other biomedical applications. His group is also working on the application of 3D bioprinting, biomaterials, micro/nanofabrication, digital microfluidics, a wide range of microfluidic applications such as nanoparticle generation, and generation of drug delivery vesicles apart from non-conventional ways of fabricating microfluidic devices.
Dr. Asthana has been instrumental in establishing PAHL BioNanoTherapeutics Pvt. Limited, a startup established with funding from BIRAC under Bio-Initiative Grant (BIG) at IKP Park, Hyderabad. Moreover, he is associated with many start-ups working on affordable diagnostic and medical device companies in India as a scientific advisor, such as FastSense Diagnostics (Pune, India) and Microfluidic Paper Medical Devices Pvt. Ltd (Hyderabad, India). He is also the chief scientific advisor for ChitoLytic Diagnostics, Canada.
