Janarthanan Venkatesan

Write-up: Janarthanan Venkatesan joined the Drug Discovery Unit (DDU), as a Teaching cum Research Assistant (TRA) on 1st August 2022. His area of interest includes medicinal chemistry and targeted protein degradation in cancer therapeutics. He is currently working under the guidance of Dr. Loganathan Rangasamy, at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), on the development of molecules for the proteasome-mediated degradation of oncogenic proteins. He has also undergone an International Internship Pilot Program (IIPP) and worked on 3D cell culture models for the study of cancer metabolism in PDAC tumours, under Dr. Ching-Feng Chiu, Taipei Medical University (TMU), sponsored by the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan. His master’s thesis was on the development of bio-polymeric sorbents for the removal of heavy metals in the aquatic system, at J.K.K. Nataraja College of Arts and Science, under Dr. V. Gopalakannan, followed by a summer internship (2022) on electrochemical detection of heavy metal pollutants, at Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology (IMMT), Bhubaneshwar.

Title of the PhD work: “Design and development of Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras     (PROTACs) for the degradation of oncogenic proteins”