Dr. Rengarajan Balamurugan
University of Hyderabad
School of Chemistry
Hyderabad - 500046
India
Our research interest is centered around synthetic organic chemistry with particular emphasis on development of new strategies and reactions to make biologically relevant molecules. As one part of our research program we make use of transition metals, in particular, gold in developing new reactions. In this regard synthesis of oxa, aza and carbacycles is being undertaken as many biologically active compounds possess these structural motifs. Our interest is to develop simple strategy that can be applied to synthesize wide range of compound collection in an efficient manner. Dr. Balamurugan was involved in the synthesis of β-lactone collection when he worked as an AvH postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Dr.Herbert Waldmann, Dept of Chemical Biology, MPI of Molecular Physiology, Dortmund, Germany. The compound collection was used to target proteins like acetylcholineesterase (AChE, hydrolyzes neurotransmitter acetylcholine) and gastric lipase (breaks down the fats in digestive system), APT 1 (deacylates some thioacetylated proteins and thus plays a role in signal transduction, Ras pathway), 11βHSD1 (the isoforms 1 and 2 regulate interconversion of biologically active 11β-hydroxyglucocorticoids) with decent hit rates.
Our second interest is to develop methods for the synthesis of glycoconjugates, in particular, glycopeptides and glycolipids as these classes of compounds play vital role in biological systems. As a postdoctoral fellow in the research group Prof. Dr. Richard Schmidt, University of Konstanz, Germany, Dr. Balamurugan synthesized α-Galactosylceramide analogs to evaluate their biological activities in various biological processes such as regulation of cells and protein kinase C activities. Some of the compounds showed very good activities and have been patented.
