25 Apr 2016|Gurgaon (Manesar) | Amity University Gurgaon
Amity Biotechnology Club organized a talk on Unlocking the chemistry of bile acids in combating cancer and infectious diseases
Amity Biotechnology Club organized a talk on unlocking the chemistry of bile acids in combating cancer and infectious diseases by Dr Avinash Bajaj from Regional Centre for Biotechnology, Faridabad on April 25th 2016. Dr. Avinash Bajaj has obtained a doctoral degree from the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, in Bio-organic Chemistry in 2008. He did post-doctoral research in the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 2008 - 2010. Currently,
He is an Associate Professor in the Regional Center for Biotechnology.
He discussed that Cancer chemotherapy treatment faces major challenges of toxicity, non-specificity, poor drug availability, and drug clearance from the body. Dr Bajaj presented the two challenges using inter-disciplinary approaches of synthetic chemistry, membrane biophysics, material science, cell biology and in vivo studies. They use bile acid scaffold for engineering of a class of amphiphiles that has the tendency to self-assemble and form aggregates. Self-assembly of these biocompatible amphiphiles were explored for sustained release of drugs for localized drug delivery applications that would help in targeted drug delivery avoiding non-specific interactions and reducing multiple cycles of chemotherapy thereby lowering toxicity. To combat drug-resistant bacterial infections, Dr Bajaj studied the interactions of amphiphiles with different cell bacterial infections, Dr Bajaj studied the interactions of amphiphiles with different cell. Membranes of mammalian cells, gram positive, gram negative and mycobacteria to find the selective membrane targeting amphiphiles. The results of the studies have unraveled the development of next generation membrane targeting antimicrobials that have ability to target infections. The Final session was finished with questionnaire and vote of thanks.