Sadanandan E. Velu, PhD
Dr. Velu is a Tenured Professor in the Chemistry Department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He currently serves as the Co-Director of the Undergraduate Program in Cancer Biology at UAB. He holds co-appointments as a Senior Scientist at UAB School of Medicine and UAB Global Center for Craniofacial Oral and Dental Disorders and as an Associate Scientist at the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences. His research, funded by National Institutes of Health and American Heart Association focuses on drug discovery and development. His research interests are in the areas of medicinal chemistry, anti-cancer and anti-infective agents, structure-based drug design, in-silico screening, directed combinatorial synthesis, structure-activity relationship studies, lead optimization and synthesis of marine natural products. He is an author/co-author of >90 peer reviewed research publications and an inventor/co-inventor of 6 issued US/European patents. He serves in the NIH, NSF, CDMRP, FLDOH (Florida Department of Health), and AHA grant review panels. He teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in the areas of Organic Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, and Natural Product chemistry. He is a recipient of the National Award for Excellence in Teaching given by the Center for Educational Policy Research (CEPR), College Board.
Recent Articles
Piyasuda Pukkanasut, Shilpa Dutta, Jason Whitt, Parvathy Babu, Osbaldo Lopez-Charcas, Tonantzin Guadalupe Anguheven-Ledezma, Juan Carlos Gomora, Renata Jaskula-Sztul, and Sadanandan E. Velu, Design, synthesis and evaluation of voltage-gated sodium channel blockers with anti-invasive activities in medullary thyroid cancer, ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters (2025), 16: 766-775, PubMed PMID: 40365421, PubMed PMCID: PMC12067137, DOI: 10.1021/acsmedchemlett.4c00576.
Parmanand Ahirwar, Veronika Kozlovskaya, Piyasuda Pukkanasut, Pavel Nikishau, Sarah Nealy, Gregory Harber, Suzanne M. Michalek, Linto Antony, Hui Wu, Eugenia Kharlampieva and Sadanandan E. Velu, Polymer vesicles for the delivery of inhibitors of cariogenic biofilm, Dental Materials (2024), 40:1937-1953, PubMed PMID: 39317560, PubMed PMCID: PMC11580801, DOI: 10.1016/j.dental.2024.09.006.
Osbaldo Lopez-Charcas, Oumnia Benouna, Roxane Lemoine, Zazil Herrera-Carrillo, Margarita Jacaranda Rosendo-Pineda, Miguel Ramírez-Aragon, Tonantzin Guadalupe Anguheven-Ledezma, Ana Alfaro, Stephanie Chadet, Fabio Ferro, Pierre Besson, Lin-Hua Jiang, Sadanandan E. Velu, Sebastien Roger and Juan Carlos Gomora, Gossypol's Blocking Mechanism on CaV3 Calcium Channels and Induction of G0/G1 Cell Cycle Arrest in Colon Cancer Cells, British Journal of Pharmacology (2024), 181: 4546-4570. PubMed PMID: 39081110, PubMed PMCID: PMC11613961, DOI: 10.1111/bph.16497.
Piyasuda Pukkanasut, Renata Jaskula-Sztul, Juan Carlos Gomora, and Sadanandan E. Velu, Therapeutic Targeting of Voltage-gated Sodium Channel NaV1.7 for Cancer Metastasis, Frontiers in Pharmacology (2024),15: 1416705, PubMed PMID: 39045054, PubMed PMCID: PMC11263763, DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1416705.
Edwin M. Rojas, Hua Zhang, Sadanandan E. Velu, and Hui Wu, Tetracyclic homoisoflavanoid (+)-brazilin: A new inhibitor of c-di-AMP production by Streptococcus mutans, Microbiology Spectrum (2024), 12, e0241823, PubMed PMID: 38591917, PubMed PMCID: PMC11064632, DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.02418-23.
