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Chandrabali Bhattacharya

Assistant Professor, Medicinal Chemistry

Department(s)
Chemistry and Biochemistry
Mail Code
4003
Phone
702-895-3882

Biography

Dr. Bhattacharya received her bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry from Presidency College Kolkata and Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. She completed her doctoral degree in bioorganic chemistry under the guidance of Dr. Sidney M. Hecht from Arizona State University, and her thesis work was mainly focused on the study of the role of the disaccharide moiety in tumor targeting of the anti-tumor agent antibiotic bleomycin (BLM). To further augment her foundation in glycoscience, Dr. Bhattacharya briefly worked with Dr. Linda Hsieh-Wilson at Caltech on understanding the role of the sulfation pattern of glycosaminoglycans in different cellular processes. Then she joined the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Anderson and Dr. Robert Langer at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT to complete her postdoctoral training as Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Fellow. At MIT, she was able to synergize my expertise in understanding the interactions involved in carbohydrate-protein binding and synthetic organic chemistry to develop a new class of supramolecules that showed promising glucose binding. She also developed lipid nanoparticles for delivering CAR mRNA to T cells in vivo for adoptive T-cell cancer therapy. At UNLV, she initiated an mRNA Nanomedicine Program and is dedicated to promoting mRNA research in Nevada. Her research interfaces the disciplines of bioengineering, drug delivery, and personalized medicine - utilizing carbohydrates and small molecules in targeting organs and cells to deliver mRNA for solving critical high-impact problems associated with diseased biology.

Expertise/ Area of interests

Organic Chemistry, Glycochemistry, Glycobiology, Chemical Biology, Medicinal Chemistry, Biomaterials, Drug and Gene delivery.