Research

Our research interests are in the interdisciplinary areas of inorganic chemical biology and bioinorganic chemistry. Our current research goal is to design and study novel cytotoxic metal complexes for targeted therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Currently, we are pursuing the following interdisciplinary research projects in our laboratory.

I. Therapeutic Applications of Metal Complexes

The biggest change in drug development, particularly in the anticancer field, has been to move towards molecularly targeted agents to circumvent multidrug resistance. This holds the promise of more selective and effective drug administration. Transition metals offer beneficial advantages over their more common counterpart of organic drugs. This includes a diverse range of coordination numbers and stereochemistry, accessible and tunable redox and electronic properties, ligand substitution etc. We are engaged in the development of specifically targeted cytotoxic metal complexes for various therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Their detailed binding interaction studies with biological targets (nucleic acid, proteins, etc.) and fate in the biological medium were also investigated. Cytotoxicity and mechanism of actions of these metallodrugs will be evaluated to determine their efficacy and mode of action.

One of the research focus is to design, develop and evaluate novel conjugates for cancer molecular imaging and targeted therapeutic applications. Two design principles are (1) understand and identify key cancer and antibacterial targets to improve biological specificity, and (2) build innovative platforms using bioconjugate techniques to achieve diagnostic and therapeutic efficacy.

II. Luminescent Lanthanide Complexes and Biological Applications

Studying chemistry and photophysical properties of lanthanide complexes is an interesting and active research area due to having a wide variety of applications of lanthanide complexes in imaging and diagnostics. Currently we are studying spectroscopic properties, structures, and photophysical properties of a series of luminescent lanthanide complexes having organic chromophores as light-absorbing antenna molecule for their applications as potential luminescent probes for various analytes or therapeutic applications.