Overview
Historically, nature has been primary source for the majority
of the drugs in use today. The most well known example
of microbe derived natural product drugs are antibiotics.
Despite the fact that more than 20,000 microbial secondary
metabolites have been described, only a small percentage
of these have been carried forward as natural product
drugs. This therefore offers wide window of opportunity
to explore and identify this microbial wealth for creation
of rich library of natural product with vast pharmacological
properties and potential therapeutic agents. It may be
said here that they are in tough competition with large
chemical libraries and with combinational chemistries.
Hence, each step of a natural product program has to be
more efficient than ever, starting from the collection
of environmental samples and the selection of strains,
to metabolic expression, genetic exploitation, sample
preparation and chemo-profiling. The focus of this division
is purification and characterization of novel bioactive
molecules from microorganisms particularly endophytes
and preparation of their derivatives to enhance their
activity
Missions
and goals
Competencies
 |
Collection of samples from diverse
ecological niches with proper selection |
|
Manipulating microbial physiology
to activate microbial natural product machinery |
|
Genetically modifying strains for
desired microbial natural product |
|
Monitoring diversity while reducing
redundancy of microbial extracts |
|
Characterization of new molecules
(NMR, MASS) from microbes and evaluation of their
biological potency |
People:
| Sr. No |
Name |
Expertise |
E-mail |
| 1. |
D. Mukherjee |
Medicinal Chemistry, Glyco-Chemistry,
Development of novel synthetic methodologies, Biotransformations
and Catalysis |
dmukherjee[at]iiim[dot]res[dot]in |
| 2. |
Bhahwal A. Shah |
Drug Development, Natural Product
Chemistry, New synthetic methodologies, Biocatalysis
and Organocatalysis. |
bashah[at]iiim[dot]res[dot]in |
Area of
research
|
Collection and screening of microbes |
|
Taxonomic characterization of microbes
after their expression, bio-evaluation |
|
Development of SOPs for extraction
of bioactive molecules |
|
Isolation and characterization of
bioactive molecules |
|
Bio-evaluation of pure molecules |
|
