Gaurav Bhardwaj

Assistant Professor, Medicinal Chemistry

Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry Faculty, School Faculty

Expertise:

Blood-brain and blood-csf barriers, Computational Design, Computational Modeling, Drug Discovery, Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biophysics, Peptide Therapeutics, Structural Biology

Education

B.Tech in Biotechnology, GGS Indraprastha University, Delhi
PhD in Integrative Biosciences, Pennsylvania State University
Postdoctoral work at the University of California, Davis, and University of Washington, Seattle.

Biography

Gaurav received his doctoral degree in Integrative Biosciences from the Pennsylvania State University. During graduate school, he developed computational methods for studying evolution of highly divergent protein families. He did his postdoc with Dr. Kit Lam at University of California, Davis and Dr. David Baker at University of Washington, Seattle. His postdoctoral work focused on computational design of hyperstable constrained peptides and macrocycles with atomic-level accuracy.

Research Interests

Computational peptide design for enhanced cell permeability, oral bioavailability, and blood-brain barrier traversal
High-throughput design of targeted peptide therapeutics

Taking Students: Yes

Selected Publications

Design and structural validation of peptide-drug conjugate ligands of the kappa-opioid receptor. Muratspahić E, Deibler K, Han J, Tomašević N, Jadhav KB, Olivé-Marti AL, Hochrainer N, Hellinger R, Koehbach J, Fay JF, Rahman MH, Hegazy L, Craven TW, Varga BR, Bhardwaj G, Appourchaux K, Majumdar S, Muttenthaler M, Hosseinzadeh P, Craik DJ, Spetea M, Che T, Baker D, Gruber CW.Nat Commun. 2023 Dec 6;14(1):8064.

Cell-permeable chameleonic peptides: Exploiting conformational dynamics in de novo cyclic peptide design. Ramelot TA, Palmer J, Montelione GT, Bhardwaj G. Curr Opin Struct Biol. 2023 Jun;80:102603. doi: 10.1016/j.sbi.2023.102603. Epub 2023 May 12.

Cyclic peptide structure prediction and design using AlphaFold. Rettie SA, Campbell KV, Bera AK, Kang A, Kozlov S, De La Cruz J, Adebomi V, Zhou G, DiMaio F, Ovchinnikov S, Bhardwaj G.bioRxiv. 2023 Feb 26:2023.02.25.529956. doi: 10.1101/2023.02.25.529956. Preprint.

Accurate de novo design of membrane-traversing macrocycles. Bhardwaj G, O’Connor J, Rettie S, Huang YH, Ramelot TA, Mulligan VK, Alpkilic GG, Palmer J, Bera AK, Bick MJ, Di Piazza M, Li X, Hosseinzadeh P, Craven TW, Tejero R, Lauko A, Choi R, Glynn C, Dong L, Griffin R, van Voorhis WC, Rodriguez J, Stewart L, Montelione GT, Craik D, Baker D. Cell. 2022 Sep 15;185(19):3520-3532.e26. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2022.07.019. Epub 2022 Aug 29.

Comprehensive computational design of ordered peptide macrocycles. Hosseinzadeh P, Bhardwaj G, Mulligan VK, Shortridge MD, Craven TW, Pardo-Avila F, Rettie SA, Kim DE, Silva DA, Ibrahim YM, Webb IK, Cort JR, Adkins JN, Varani G, Baker D. Science. 2017 Dec 15;358(6369):1461-1466. doi: 10.1126/science.aap7577.

A Novel Galectin-1 Inhibitor Discovered through One-Bead Two-Compound Library Potentiates the Antitumor Effects of Paclitaxel in vivo. Shih TC, Liu R, Fung G, Bhardwaj G, Ghosh PM, Lam KS. Mol Cancer Ther. 2017 Jul;16(7):1212-1223. doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.MCT-16-0690. Epub 2017 Apr 10.

Accurate de novo design of hyperstable constrained peptides. Bhardwaj G, Mulligan VK, Bahl CD, Gilmore JM, Harvey PJ, Cheneval O, Buchko GW, Pulavarti SV, Kaas Q, Eletsky A, Huang PS, Johnsen WA, Greisen PJ, Rocklin GJ, Song Y, Linsky TW, Watkins A, Rettie SA, Xu X, Carter LP, Bonneau R, Olson JM, Coutsias E, Correnti CE, Szyperski T, Craik DJ, Baker D. Nature. 2016 Oct 20;538(7625):329-335. doi: 10.1038/nature19791. Epub 2016 Sep 14.

Protection of the Furin Cleavage Site in Low-Toxicity Immunotoxins Based on Pseudomonas Exotoxin A. Kaplan G, Lee F, Onda M, Kolyvas E, Bhardwaj G, Baker D, Pastan I. Toxins (Basel). 2016 Jul 25;8(8). pii: E217. doi: 10.3390/toxins8080217.

Covalent Chemical Ligation Strategy for Mono- and Polyclonal Immunoglobulins at Their Nucleotide Binding Sites. Lac D, Feng C, Bhardwaj G, Le H, Tran J, Xing L, Fung G, Liu R, Cheng H, Lam KS. Bioconjug Chem. 2016 Jan 20;27(1):159-69. doi: 10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.5b00574. Epub 2015 Dec 17.

Targeting Btk/Etk of prostate cancer cells by a novel dual inhibitor. Guo W, Liu R, Bhardwaj G, Yang JC, Changou C, Ma AH, Mazloom A, Chintapalli S, Xiao K, Xiao W, Kumaresan P, Sanchez E, Yeh CT, Evans CP, Patterson R, Lam KS, Kung HJ. Cell Death Dis. 2014 Sep 4;5:e1409. doi: 10.1038/cddis.2014.343.

PHYRN: a robust method for phylogenetic analysis of highly divergent sequences. Bhardwaj G, Ko KD, Hong Y, Zhang Z, Ho NL, Chintapalli SV, Kline LA, Gotlin M, Hartranft DN, Patterson ME, Dave F, Smith EJ, Holmes EC, Patterson RL, van Rossum DB. PLoS One. 2012;7(4):e34261. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034261. Epub 2012 Apr 13.

Additional Publications