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Biosketch of RK

Raghavendra Kikkeri  received his Master degree from the University of Mysore, where he studied Organic chemistry as major.  In 2001 he moved to the Weizmann Institute of Science where he earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Abraham Shanzer in 2006.  After  postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. Peter Seeberger and Prof. Ajit Varki at the ETH Zurich, MPI Berlin and UCSD San Diego. He became Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Dec 2010. Currently, He is full-time professor in IISER, Pune, also Editorial member of J. Carbohydrate Chemistry.

Research Interest

Carbohydrates play an important role in many biological systems by virtue of their lectins which recognize them. Carbohydrate-lectin interactions are involved in expansively diverse biological processes which include embryonic development, intracellular trafficking, cell-cell recognition, cell activation, cell adhesion, cell homing, endocytosis, phagocytosis, inflammation, tumor cell metastasis and apoptosis. One main drawback for investigating carbohydrate-lectin interactions is their weak affinity of binding.  So far, three promising strategies have emerged from our research: (I) designing multivalent glyco-probes using cyclodextrin templates and their utilization towards amplifying carbohydrate mediated targeting and self-assembly; (II) shapes of the glyco-nanoparticles to amplify the carbohydrate-protein interactions and (III) designing biomimetic carbohydrates to modulate the biological functions.

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 Funding

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