Nagasuma Chandra

Nagasuma Chandra
Born Karnataka, India
Residence Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Nationality Indian
Alma mater
Known for Studies on Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions

Nagasuma Chandra is an Indian structural biologist, biochemist and a professor at the department of biochemistry of the Indian Institute of Science. She is known for her studies on Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for her contributions to biosciences in 2008.

Biography

Nagasuma Chandra, born in the south Indian state of Karnataka, completed her undergraduate (BPharm) and post-graduate (MPharm) studies at the Bangalore University and moved to the UK from where she secured a PhD from the University of Bristol in 1992.[1] She did her post-doctoral work at the Molecular Biophysics Unit (MBU) of the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) from 1992 to 1997 and joined IISc as a research scientist the same year.[2] A year later, she became a faculty of bioinformatics of the institute[3] where she holds the position of a professor. At IISc, she has set up a systems biology and computational biochemistry laboratory, popularly known as Chandralab,[4] and hosts several research scholars.[5] She also serves as a faculty at the National Network for Mathematical and Computational Biology, an educational agency funded by the Science and Engineering Research Board of the Government of India.[6]

Legacy

Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Chandra's research focus is in the fields of computational systems biology, cell modeling and structural bioinformatics[3] and she leads a team of scientists who are involved in research in areas such as systems biology, computational immunology, structural bioinformatics and drug discovery.[4] She has carried out studies on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative pathogen of tuberculosis, with special emphasis on their metabolic processes and, along with M. Vijayan and K. Sekar, two of her colleagues at IISc,[7] has developed system models which has helped identify new drug targets against the disease.[8] In 2017, the team led by her identified three drugs namely Ebselen, Vancomycin and Phenylarsine oxide that could be used in combination with Isoniazid, the principal antibiotic used against tuberculosis, to treat the drug-resistant strains of the pathogen.[9] The team discovered that the three drugs lowered the antioxidant levels in the bacterium and thereby destroyed its drug-resistance.[10] Her studies have been documented by way of a number of articles[11][note 1] and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 297 of them.[12] She has also delivered invited speeches at various seminars and conferences.[1][13]

Awards and honors

The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2008.[14]

Selected bibliography

  • Bhagavat, Raghu; et al. (January 31, 2018). "An Augmented Pocketome: Detection and Analysis of Small-Molecule Binding Pockets in Proteins of Known 3D Structure". Structure. 26 (3): 499–512. doi:10.1016/j.str.2018.02.001.
  • Anand, Praveen; Chandra, Nagasuma (2014-09-15). "Characterizing the pocketome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and application in rationalizing polypharmacological target selection". Scientific Reports. 4 (1). doi:10.1038/srep06356. ISSN 2045-2322.
  • Chandra, Nagasuma; Padiadpu, Jyothi. "Network approaches to drug discovery". Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery. 8 (1): 7–20. doi:10.1517/17460441.2013.741119.
  • Bhagavat, Raghu; Chandra, Nagasuma (2014-01-01). "Common recognition principles across diverse sequence and structural families of sialic acid binding proteins". Glycobiology. 24 (1): 5–16. doi:10.1093/glycob/cwt063. ISSN 0959-6658.

See also

Notes

  1. Please see Selected bibliography section

References

  1. 1 2 "Drug Discovery India 2017 Speaker Biography". SELECTBIO. 2018-01-17. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  2. "Faculty profile". www.biochem.iisc.ernet.in. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  3. 1 2 Raman, Karthik; Chandra, Nagasuma (2010-02-01). "Systems biology". Resonance. 15 (2): 131–153. doi:10.1007/s12045-010-0015-7. ISSN 0971-8044.
  4. 1 2 "Chandra Lab - Department of Biochemistry". proline.physics.iisc.ernet.in. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  5. "Chandra Lab - Team". proline.physics.iisc.ernet.in. 2018-01-17. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  6. "Nagasuma Chandra - National Network for Mathematical and Computational Biology". www.iiserpune.ac.in. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  7. D. P. Burma; Maharani Chakravorty (2011). From Physiology and Chemistry to Biochemistry. Pearson Education India. pp. 389–. ISBN 978-81-317-3220-5.
  8. "Nagasuma Chandra - Division of Biological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science". bio.iisc.ac.in. 2018-01-17. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  9. "Scientists find ways to reverse drug resistance, a major burden in treating Tuberculosis". Research Matters. 2017-02-08. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  10. "City scientists deliver killer punch to drug-resistant TB". Bangalore Mirror. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  11. "On Google Scholar". Google Scholar. 2018-01-08. Retrieved 2018-01-08.
  12. "On ResearchGate". On ResearchGate. 2018-01-09. Retrieved 2018-01-09.
  13. "Systems biology and protein interaction network" (PDF). Regional Centre for Biotechnology. 2018-01-17. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  14. "Awardees of National Bioscience Awards for Career Development" (PDF). Department of Biotechnology. 2016. Retrieved 2017-11-20.
  • Nagasuma Chandra (May 4, 2017). "Can biology be a predictive science ?" (YouTube video). IISc Naturalists. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
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