Dr. Mukund Jha

Research Interests:

My research interests are interdisciplinary with five major emphases:

• Chemical Synthesis
• Green Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Microbiology
• Enzymology

The synthetic aspect deals with developing new and efficient methodologies for the synthesis of novel heterocycles. Currently, we are focused on exploring the synthetic chemistry around several biologically relevant heterocycles such as indole, pyridine and pyrimidine and use this knowledge to synthesize useful compounds to enrich the heterocycle diversity. The newly synthesized novel heterocylces will be routinely screened to evaluate their pharmaceutical importance based on 3-D pharmacophoric similarity search of previously generated hypothesis using in-silico mapping.

Understanding the binding interaction of estrogens with the estrogen receptors (ERs) is a key to understating the complex process of ER signalling that regulates various physiological effects. Our group is also involved in the synthesis of novel chemical probes which are designed to provide new insights into binding interaction with the target protein. Furthermore, the synthesized compounds will be routinely tested by evaluating their physicochemical properties and their effect on certain basic biological processes using receptor binding affinity, cytotoxicity assays and metabolism studies. The insights gained from understanding the fundamental chemistry of receptor binding/metabolism will be of immense application to the development of new therapeutic agents.