Sadanandan E. Velu, PhD

We are located in the Labs 137 and 143 on the first floor of Chemistry building which is located at 901, 14th street South on UAB campus by the side of UAB Green. The main focus of this lab is Drug Discovery and Development. Lab work force is mainly constituted of Graduate Students working towards their PhD degree, Undergraduate Students carrying out their Senior / Honors Research, Postdoctoral trainees and occasionally Research Assistants. The research projects are mainly directed towards the discovery of anti-cancer and anti-infective agents. There are also a few other drug discovery projects that we are currently working on. Ongoing research projects are listed below:

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• Discovery and Development of Anti-Breast Cancer Agents from Marine Alkaloids

• Discovery of Inhibitors of Staphylococcus aureus Sortase A

• Structure Based Design of inhibitors of Trypanosoma Cruzi Dihydrofolate Reductase

• Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel Blockers for Preventing Cancer Metastasis

• Synthesis of Novel Mitochondrially Targeted Antioxidant Therapeutics

The students who work on these projects will be trained broadly in the areas of Medicinal Chemistry and Organic Chemistry. More specifically, they will be trained in Organic Synthesis, Compound Purification, Compound Characterization, Spectroscopy (NMR. MS, IR, UV, Fluorescence), Structure Based and Fragment Based Drug discovery, Molecular Modeling, In-Silico Virtual Screening, Lead Identification, Structure Activity Relationship Studies, Lead Optimization, In Vitro Enzymatic Assays and Cell based Assays.