Research Interests

Chinese herbal medicine, natural products inspired synthesis, β-carboline derivatives, anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory drugs, inflammasomes inhibitors, drug development and research.

Techniques and skills

Chemical reactions: experience in Heck reaction, Suzuki coupling, Beckmann rearrangement, Jones oxidation, Claisen Schmidt condensation, Knoevenagel condensation, Wittig reaction, Grignard reagents, epoxidation, Baeyer-Villiger oxidation, Duff formylation, glycosylation and cylclization reactions etc.

Natural products: extraction of crude material, isolation of compounds using column chromatography, preparative thin layer chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography, modification of natural compound from plant sources, total synthesis.

Analytical techniques: expertise to run the analytical instruments like NMR, LC-MS, IR and HPLC with data interpretation.

Search tool and drafting: prior art searches for reaction, patent and literature using various databases, such as Sci-Finder, Thomson innovation, reaxys; Patent drafting; Freedom-to-Operate (FTO) opinions; Non-infringing strategies to R & D.

Research summary

Neutrophil plays an important role in Inflammatory responses. Various anti-neutrophilic inflammatory compounds have been reported from natural products. Our team is involved in synthesis of natural products and herbal Chinese medicines inspired compounds by means of chemical synthesis in laboratory. We are synthesizing inflammasomes inhibitory compounds. Inflammasomes, key molecular regulators consist of a central protein, play very important role in inflammation an adaptor protein ASC (apoptosis speck-like protein) and a caspase-1 protein.  Activation of caspase-1 induces maturation of cytokines such as interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and interleukin-18 (IL-18). Inflammasomes are activated by many factors and their activation results in complex signaling, which can contribute to the pathology of inflammatory, autoimmune, infectious and many other diseases.  We are also working on synthesis of novel HDAC inhibitors as anticancer drugs.