Department of
Chemistry

Harinath Chakrapani completed his undergraduate and post-graduate studies in Chemistry from Loyola College (1994-97) and Indian Institute of Technology Madras (1997-99), respectively. In 1999, he moved to Duke University, USA to pursue his doctoral studies, which he completed in 2005. His post-doctoral research work was carried out at Wake Forest University and the National Cancer Institute. He joined IISER Pune in July 2009 and is currently Professor.

Research

Redox chemical biology

Prof. Harinath Chakrapani's group designs, synthesizes and evaluates organic compounds that can produce redox-active species derived from sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen in a spatiotemporally controlled manner as tools for biochemical and cell biological studies. These biological reactive species are produced during normal metabolism but elevated levels can cause irreparable damage to cells. The tools developed in their lab provide insights into disease mechanisms as well as new leads in developing therapeutics. The focus is on infectious diseases, with a special focus on antimicrobial resistance as well as neurodegenerative disorders, which are frequently associated with dysfunction in redox homeostasis.

Selected Publications

Bora, P.; Manna, S.; Nair, M.; Satha, R.M.S.; Singh, S.; Adury, V.S.S.; Gupta, K.; Mukherjee, A.; Saini, D. K.; Kamat, S.S.; Hazra, A. B.; Chakrapani, H. Chemical Science, (2021) in press.

Khandelwal, N.; Shaikh, M.; Mhetre, A.; Balaji, K. N.; Chakrapani, H.; Kamat, S. S. Fatty acid chain length drives lysophosphatidylserine-dependent immunological outputs (2021) Cell Chemical Biology, 28: 1169-1179.

Kulkarni, A; Soni, I.; Kelkar, D.S. Dharmaraja, A. T.; Sankar, R. K.; Beniwal, G.; Rajendran, A.; Tamhankar, S.; Chopra,S.; Kamat, S. S.; Chakrapani, H. Chemoproteomics of an indole-based quinone- epoxide identifies druggable vulnerabilities in Vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (2019). 62: 6785-6795.

Bora, P.; Chauhan, P.; Manna, S.; Chakrapani, H. A vinyl-boronate ester-based persulfide donor controllable by hydrogen peroxide, a Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). Organic Letters (2018) 20: 7916-7920.

Chauhan, P.; Jos, S.; Chakrapani, H. Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS)-triggered tunable Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) release. Organic Letters (2018) 20: 3766-3770.

Pardeshi, K. A.; Ravikumar, G.; Chakrapani, H. Esterase sensitive self-immolative Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) donors. Organic Letters (2018) 20, 4-7.

Shukla, P.; Khodade, V. S.; SharathChandra, M.; Chauhan, P.; Mishra, S.; Siddaramappa, S.; Bulagonda, E. P.; Singh, A.; Chakrapani, H. "On Demand" redox buffering by H2S contributes to antibiotic resistance revealed by a bacteria-specific H2S donor. Chemical Science (2017) 8: 4967-4972.

Sharma, A. K.; Nair, M.; Chauhan, P.; Gupta, K.; Saini, D. K.; Chakrapani, H. Visible-light-triggered uncaging of carbonyl sulfide for Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) release. Organic Letters (2017) 19: 4822-4825.

Ravikumar, G.; Bagheri, M.; Saini, D. K.; Chakrapani, H. A small molecule for theraNOstic targeting of cancer cells. Chemical Communications (2017) 53: 13352–13355.

Khodade, V.S.; Kulkarni, A.; Sen Gupta, A.; Sengupta, K.; Chakrapani, H. A small molecule for controlled generation of peroxynitrite. Organic Letters (2016) 18: 1274-1277.