Raghavan Varadarajan Explained

Raghavan Varadarajan
Birth Date:1960 11, df=yes
Birth Place:India
Nationality:Indian
Doctoral Advisor:Steven G. Boxer
Frederic M. Richards
Known For:Protein structure
Protein folding
Awards:1998 B. M. Birla Award for Biological Sciences
2002 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize
2013 CSIR G. N. Ramachandran Gold Medal

Raghavan Varadarajan (born 27 November 1960) is an Indian biophysicist and a professor at the Indian Institute of Science.[1] He is known for his researches in the fields of protein structure and protein folding[2] and his contributions in developing vaccines and drugs for treating a type of fatal influenza and HIV-1.[3] He is a former J. C. Bose National Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology and an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy.[4] The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2002, for his contributions to biological sciences.[5]

Biography

Born on 27 November 1960,[6] Raghavan Varadarajan completed his graduate and master's degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1982 and moved to the US for his doctoral studies at Stanford University under the guidance of Steven G. Boxer to secure a PhD. His post-doctoral studies were at Yale University at the laboratory of Frederic M. Richards during 1988–92 and he returned to India to start his academic career at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 1992. Holding the position of a professor of Molecular Biophysics Unit,[7] he heads The Varadarajan Laboratory of IISc which has research interests in the design of HIV-1 and influenza immunogens.[8] He also serves as an honorary professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research[9] and as the chairman of the scientific board of Theramyt Novobiologics, a Bengaluru-based research platform (which he helped found), engaged in the development of biological drugs.[10]

Legacy

Varadarajan's early researches were focused on the interaction of protein molecules and their sequential properties.[11] At Steven G. Boxer's laboratory, he worked on human myoglobin, a hemeprotein, and studied its dielectric properties as well as the redox potential/spectral properties of bound chromophores.[12] Later, during his post-doctoral days at Yale, he researched on the structural and thermodynamic changes associated with cavity formation in proteins. Continuing his researches at IISc, he is known to have developed a new crystallographic and Nuclear magnetic resonance hydrogen exchange protocol for the characterization of disordered states of proteins[13] and his studies helped in the estimation of the hydrophobic driving force in protein folding. Collaborating with Merck Research Laboratories on behalf of Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, his team developed a number of immunogens which have been demonstrated to have positive effect as HIV-1 vaccines and he holds the patent for the invention.[14] Merck have tested the a few vaccines and some of the other proposals are being tested by International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.[15]

Varadarajan has published his research findings by way of several articles and his publications have been listed in a number of online article repositories.[16] [17] [18] He served as an investigator of the DBT-IAVI Programme jointly organized by the Department of Biotechnology and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative for the development of HIV vaccines.[19] He has also mentored a number of scholars in their doctoral researches and has conducted seminars on his researches.[20] [21]

Awards and honors

Varadarajan received the B. M. Birla Science Award of the B. M. Birla Science Centre in 1998 for his contributions to the study of protein structure and foldings[22] and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2002. In 2013, CSIR honored him again with the G. N. Ramachandran Gold Medal for Excellence in Biological Sciences and Technology.[23] He received a number of research fellowships which included the Swarnajayanthi Fellowship for Biological Sciences of the Department of Science and Technology and AIDS-Innovation Grant Award of the National Institutes of Health (both in 1999), Senior Research Fellowship of Wellcome Trust (2000) and the J. C. Bose National Fellowship of the Department of Science and Technology (2007–12). He is also an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Selected bibliography

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Executive Profile . Bloomberg . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  2. Web site: Brief Profile of the Awardee . Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize . 2016 . 5 October 2016.
  3. Web site: Fighting the flu virus . Deccan Herald . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  4. Web site: Indian fellow - Varadarajan . Indian National Science Academy . 2016 . 11 October 2016.
  5. Web site: View Bhatnagar Awardees . Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize . 2016 . 5 October 2016.
  6. Web site: Fellow profile - Varadarajan . Indian Academy of Sciences . 2016 . 6 October 2016.
  7. Web site: Professor Molecular Biophysics Unit . Indian Institute of Science . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  8. Web site: Varadarajan Laboratory . Indian Institute of Science . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  9. Web site: Faculty members . Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  10. Web site: Founding team . Theramyt Novobiologics . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  11. Web site: Lack of good students worries Bhatnagar awardees . Times of India . 12 October 2002 . 19 October 2016.
  12. 26170. Cloning, Expression in Escherichia coli, and Reconstitution of Human Myoglobin . Raghavan Varadarajan, Alex Szabo and Steven G. Boxer . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . September 1985 . 82 . 17 . 5681–5684 . 10.1073/pnas.82.17.5681. 390615 . 3898068. 1985PNAS...82.5681V . free .
  13. Web site: Handbook of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize Winners . Council of Scientific and Industrial Research . 1999 . 5 October 2016 . 34 . 4 March 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160304043957/http://www.csirhrdg.res.in/ssb.pdf . dead .
  14. Web site: HIV-1 Envelope Based Fragments . Patents Encyclopedia . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  15. Web site: Summary of Achievements . Science and Engineering Research Board, Government of India . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  16. Web site: Raghavan Varadarajan on ScienceOpen . ScienceOpen . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  17. Web site: Citing TSpred Server . Bioinformatics Institute . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  18. Web site: All Publications . Boxer Lab . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  19. Web site: New Indian Medicinal Chemistry Programme towards Advancement of Novel Neutralizing Antibody Approach . International AIDS Vaccine Initiative . 2 May 2007 . 19 October 2016.
  20. Web site: Seminar by Prof. Raghavan Varadarajan . Department of Biological Sciences, University of London . 2015 . 19 October 2016.
  21. Web site: Speakers . Presidency University . 2016 . 19 October 2016.
  22. Web site: Birla awards for young scientists . 19 December 2001 . . 19 October 2016.
  23. Web site: G.N. Ramachandran Gold Medal for Excellence in Biological Sciences & Technology 2013 . Council of Scientific and Industrial Research . October 2013 . 19 October 2016.

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