Sridhar Varadarajan

 

Sridhar Varadarajan
Associate Professor, Bio-organic and Medicinal Chemistry
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Alma Mater

• B.S.in Chemistry, Bombay University
• B.S. (Tech) in Chemical Engineering, Bombay University Institute of Chemical Technology
• Ph.D. Physical Organic Chemistry, Pennsylvania State University
• Postdoctoral Research (Alzheimer's Disease) with Prof. D. Allen Butterfield, University of Kentucky
• Postdoctoral Research (DNA damage) with Prof. Barry Gold, Eppley Cancer Center, University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Address information:
Sridhar Varadarajan
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of North Carolina Wilmington
601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC 28403-5932
Ph: (910) 962-7350
Fax: (910) 962-3013
varadarajans@uncw.edu

Research Interests

Research in our laboratory is primarily focused on the design and investigation of novel compounds that can inflict site-specific, cytotoxic, non-mutagenic DNA damage in targeted cells.We are specifically interested in compounds that can target specific cell types (such as breast cancer cells, pancreatic β-cells, etc)and that can form lethal N3-methyladenine adducts in these cells due to their selective binding to the minor groove of DNA at specific sequences. Such molecules will aid in the investigation of mechanisms of cell death in autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, and in the design of new drugs for cancer. This research is a multidisciplinary effort that involves computational chemistry for the design of compounds, organic synthesis for the preparation of compounds, biochemistry for investigating the reactions of molecules with DNA, analytical chemistry for identifying and quantifying DNA damage, biophysical chemistry for measuring the DNA-binding characteristics of molecules, and molecular biology for investigating the biological consequence of treating cells with these DNA-damaging compounds. Our laboratory maintains active collaborations with molecular biologists, computational chemists, and biophysical chemists who are all experts in their fields.

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UNCW is well equipped with state of the art instrumentation, including fluorescence, circular dichroism, UV, and FTIR spectroscopy equipment, isothermal titration and differential scanning calorimeters, various HPLC setups, a Varian Saturn 3800/2200 GC/MS, two NMR Spectrometers (Bruker 600 MHz and 400 MHz), an Agilent 1290 Infinity UHPLC w/Bruker Microtof-Q II High Resolution Mass Spectrometer, and an Agilent 1290 Infinity UHPLC w/ Bruker Amazon SL Mass Spectrometer. Graduate and undergraduate students participating in research get trained and gain hands-on experience with instrumentation appropriate for their projects.