Domino Reactions in Drug Discovery

Dr. Shanta Bhar is a medicinal and computational scientist with 13 years of postdoctoral experience in designing and synthesizing new chemical entities and developing investigational new drug applications (NDAs) for diabetes, cancer, and inflammation with emphasis on pre-clinical small molecule drug discovery. Dr. Bhar specializes in domino reactions, computer-aided drug design (CADD), structure-based drug design (SBDD), and ligand-based drug design (LBDD), spanning the therapeutic areas of cancer, diabetes, and dengue. She works to aid therapeutic development by formulating concise, efficient and scalable synthetic strategies that integrate the versatility of domino reactions to generate complex derivatized scaffolds thus streamlining the process and economic viability of a drug from conception to approval. Dr. Bhar's current research is directed towards the synthesis of members of the epothilone family, a newer class of microtubule inhibitors, which is involved in the growth of solid tumors and VEGF [vascular endothelial growth factor] inhibitors, that affect the process of angiogenesis by reducing tumor size and tendency to metastasize. In both pharma research and academic pursuits, Dr. Bhar has laid out the roadmap and designed potential drug candidates. She has worked on lead optimization and design of retrosynthetic strategy, and has been exploring avenues to scale down complex syntheses or synthesis of complex drugs including chiral drugs. These include established pharmaceuticals, pre-clinical candidates, promising potential NCEs, and agrochemicals involving efficient utilization of Domino Reactions.