Suchismita Acharya, PhD

I have been working in the field of glaucoma research, on drug design, synthesis and optimization to find a lead drug candidate for clinical research, for the past 17 years. I am an organic and medicinal chemist who is highly experienced in designing and optimizing lead molecules for neuroscience and ophthalmology drug discovery programs at Alcon labs and Novartis. My research included optimizing the physical property of the small molecule using synthetic organic and organo-metallic chemistry, and structure activity relationship study (traditional and structure-based) for topical ocular and intravitreal, intraperitoneal, as well as oral drug delivery. I have also extensive experience in drug permeability, pharmacokinetics, and bioanalytical studies to screen drug compounds in in vitro and ex-vivo models. Our current research is focused on expanding the chemical toolbox for neural signaling and anti-inflammation/anti-oxidant pathways to understand the mechanism of action of the disease pathology associated with glaucomatous optic neuropathy, Alzheimer disease, ischemic stroke as well as angiogenesis. Our lab integrates medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, bio-engineering, and drug delivery, using nanotechnology. We employ synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry to generate a small molecule library for low throughput as well as high throughput screening (target-based as well as phenotypic). The ultimate goal of my lab is to produce novel therapeutic molecules which can progress to human clinical trials for these diseases.