Chemical Biologists Meet at ICCB-2014, the First Annual Conference

Jun 20, 2014 - Chemical Biologists Meet at ICCB-2014, the First Annual Conference of the Newly Born Chemical Biology Society of India, at the City of ...
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Chemical Biologists Meet at ICCB-2014, the First Annual Conference of the Newly Born Chemical Biology Society of India, at the City of Pearls Chitta Ranjan Patra and Arabinda Chaudhuri* Biomaterials Group, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad-500 007, India

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sessions of ICCB-2014, and introduced Professor P. Balaram, IISc, Bangalore and the Keynote Speaker of ICCB-2014. The 1.5 h inaugural session ended with a mesmerizing keynote address by Professor Balaram on “Probing Peptide Diversity in Conus Venom”. Most of the technical sessions of ICCB-2014 had one plenary lecture, 2 or 3 invited lectures, and few short oral presentations by selected young faculty members, students, and postdoctoral researchers. Professor Ashutosh Chilkoti, Duke University, Durham, USA, delivered the first plenary lecture in Technical Session I chaired by Professor Santanu Bhattacharyya, IISc, Bangalore. Professor Chilkoti brilliantly covered the developments in his laboratory over the past decade on the molecular design of genetically encoded stimulus-responsive elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) for drug delivery. He first explained the most distinguishing feature of ELPs. Below a characteristic inverse transition temperature (Tt), ELPs are soluble in aqueous solution. However, upon the temperature being raised above their Tt, they desolvate and undergo phase separation. He then elegantly demonstrated how conjugation of multiple copies of a potent cancer drug such as doxorubicin or paclitaxel to one end of an ELP via a pH-sensitive linker spontaneously triggers their self-assembly into near monodispersed nanoparticles. Subsequently Prof. Chilkoti elaborated on his important finding that a single dose of such self-assembled monodispersed nanoparticles is capable of inducing near complete tumor regression in a murine cancer model. Dr. Seergazhi G. Srivatsan from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, delivered the next invited lecture on his group’s effort in developing new strategies to functionalize RNA by using bioorthogonal reactions. Specifically, he elaborated on the direct incorporation of azide and alkyne groups into RNA oligonucleotides by in vitro transcription reactions and subsequent posttranscriptional chemical functionalization of RNA by click and Staudinger reactions.1,2 Furthermore, he described the utility of this method in the fluorescence imaging of cellular RNA transcripts. The second invited lecture in this first technical session was delivered by Professor Chantal Pichon, University of Orléans, France, on the innovative molecular imaging system developed by her group to monitor the expression of endogenous microRNAs in live organism. Prof. Pichon first explained the construction of engineered plasmid DNA based on the RNAiInducible Luciferase Expression System (RILES) to monitor the activity of the endogenous RNAi machinery.3 Her group has customized a Cumate gene-switch inducible system in such

ndia has now a critical number of laboratories pursuing globally competitive research programs in the interface of chemistry and biology. Recently, scientists from many of these active chemical biology groups in India as well as several eminent chemical biologists from abroad shared their research findings in the first annual conference of the newly born Chemical Biology Society (CBS) of India. The International Conference on Chemical Biology: Disease Mechanisms and Therapeutics (ICCB-2014) was organized jointly by CBS-India and CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIRIICT) at Hyderabad (Figures 1 and 2), the City of Pearls, during February 6−8, 2014. Headquartered at CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (CSIR-IICB), Kolkata, with Professor Siddhartha Roy, Director, CSIR-IICB as its Founder President, the newly born Chemical Biology Society of India has been formally recognized by the International Chemical Biology Society (ICBS) and informally by a few other National Chemical Biology Societies. In full consonance with the mission of ICBS, the aspirations of CBS-India are to foster seamless research collaborations among chemists, biologists, clinicians, physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists with interest at the crossroads of chemistry and biology; to inspire creative young minds in pursuing research in the interdisciplinary science of chemical biology; to promote academy-industry research collaborations; and to provide the chemical biologists of India a globally visible vibrant platform for becoming connected with their overseas peers. More than 400 young and established chemical biologists from India, United States, Germany, France, and Japan enthusiastically participated in ICCB-2014. An overwhelmingly large number (240) of young doctoral and postdoctoral researchers participated in the poster sessions of ICCB-2014, thanks to multiple best poster awards sponsored by Journal of Biological Chemistry/American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (1 Herbert Tabor Young Investigator Award of 1500 USD plus a crystal plaque), ACS Chemical Biology (3 ACS Chemical Biology Best Poster Awards of Rs. 10,000 each), and Bioconjugate Chemistry (3 Bioconjugate Chemistry Best Poster Awards of 100 USD each). In the inaugural session on February 6, 2014, Dr. M. Lakshmi Kantam, Director, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad and President of the ICCB-2014 Local Organizing Committee, extended her hearty and warm welcome to the symposium delegates from India and abroad. In her welcome address, Professor Santanu Bhattacharya, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and Vice President of CBS-India, briefly delved into the genesis and mission of the newly born Chemical Biology Society of India. Dr. Arabinda Chaudhuri, CSIR-IICT and Convener, ICCB2014, welcomed the delegates, highlighted the various technical © 2014 American Chemical Society

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Figure 1. CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT): Venue for ICCB-2014, February 6−8, 2014 at Hyderabad. Photograph by P. Yogendernath, Photography Division, BMA, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad.

cell. Central to their approach in addressing this long-standing question relating to cell division is the use of cell-permeable chemical inhibitors discovered, designed, or validated by the Kapoor group as probes. He then delved into how dynamics of cell division can be examined by combining the use of such small molecule probes with state-of-the-art microscopy. The next invited lecture in the session was delivered by Dr. Yamuna Krishnan, National Centre for Biological Science (NCBS), Bangalore. Dr. Krishnan discussed a new role for DNA inside of living systems, which was its capacity to function as a fluorescent sensor for acidity inside living cells in culture as well as in a multicellular living organism.7,8 The advantage of using DNA sensors is the ability to introduce distinct FRET pairs, which enables the multiplexing of DNA sensors along different endocytic pathways in the same cell.9 These studies position DNA devices as next generation probes of complex biological phenomena.10 The session ended with two short oral presentations by Dr. Selvakumar Karuthapandi, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, on allosteric catalysts for the detection of proteins and by Dr. Sudhir Kashyap, CSIRIICT, Hyderabad, India, on design and development of “Biased-previleged” scaffold-based inhibitors of lysine methyltransferase. Dr. Kashyap’s lecture was followed by a 1.5 h combined tea break and Poster Session I. With unprecedented enthusiasm, 120 young chemical biologists from India and abroad presented their research findings in this poster session and interacted with delegates of ICCB-2014. The third and last technical session of ICCB-2014 on February 6, 2014 was chaired by Professor Arindam Banerjee, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata. The session began with the plenary lecture by Dr. Joel Schneider, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Health, USA. Dr. Schneider discussed the design of peptidebased hydrogels that enable the direct three-dimensional encapsulation and subsequent localized delivery of small molecules, proteins, or cells to tissue. Next he elegantly elaborated on their interesting findings that some of these hydrogels kill a broad spectrum of bacteria on contact.11 On the basis of the mechanism of antibacterial action of the gels and the fact that bacteria and cancer cells share similar traits with respect to their cellular membranes, Dr. Schneider finally explained how his group has gone on to design a new class of nongelling, soluble peptides that show anticancer activity against a broad array of cancer cells.12 Next in the session

Figure 2. Dais of CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) auditorium (venue for ICCB-2014, February 6−8, 2014) at Hyderabad. Photograph by P. Yogendernath, Photography Division, BMA, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad.

a way that the miRNA of interest can control the expression of a transcriptional repressor. When the targeted microRNA is expressed, it represses the production of the repressor and switch-ON the production of the luciferase protein. Prof. Pichon then elegantly explained how the RILES tool allowed them to define a precise therapeutic window for the delivery and targeting of pharmacological inhibitors by sonoporation.4 Dr. Kausik Chakraborty, CSIR-IGIB, delivered the third invited lecture. Dr. Chakraborty first explained that different individuals express a difference in phenotypes of different diseases even when the identical causal mutation is present. He then showed that this difference in the degree of phenotypes may be explained by mechanisms related to genetic buffering. Their recent work in a simple prokaryote revealed that small molecule chaperones in the cell may help in buffering of phenotypes by aiding protein folding in the cell.5,6 The second technical session chaired by Dr. Manika PalBhadra, CSIR-IICT, started with the plenary lecture delivered by Tarun M. Kapoor, The Rockefeller University, New York, USA. Professor Kapoor first elaborated on the powerful multidisciplinary approach developed by his group for obtaining molecular insights into how during cell division exactly one copy of our genome is delivered to each daughter 1225

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development of first gene therapy strategy against Hsp90 in tumor.21 Dr. Banerjee also emphasized developing a GR-based platform technology to overcome drug resistance in cancer stem cells and other aggressive tumors. The fifth technical session of ICCB-2014 chaired by Dr. G. Suresh Kumar, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, started with the plenary lecture by Professor Ruma Banerjee, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, USA. Prof. Banerjee’s presentation focused on the enzymology of H2S biogenesis and catabolism and its relevance to disease.22 H2S is a gaseous signaling molecule, and work in her laboratory has uncovered the relaxed specificity of the human transsulfuration enzymes, which supports H2S production, while their structures are providing detailed insights into stabilization of reactive intermediates and mechanisms of allosteric regulation.23,24 This plenary lecture was followed by three invited lectures. The first one was delivered by Dr. Amitabha Chattapadhyay, CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. Dr. Chattopadhyay focused on the role of membrane cholesterol in the organization and function of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) such as the serotonin-1A receptor and its implications in health and diasease.25 The second invited lecture in the session was delivered by Professor Tapas Kumar Kundu, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore and Secretary, CBSIndia. Prof. Kundu first briefly mentioned the ongoing work in his laboratory on the development of several small molecule modulators of different classes of histone-modifying enzymes, especially lysine acetyltransferases and arginine methyltransferases. However, his lecture was mainly focused on the recent discovery by his group of the PCAF-specific inhibitor embelin and the p300-specific inhibitor luteolin. The antineoplastic therapeutic perspective of the lysine acetyltransferase inhibitors and their role to elucidate the miRNA network in disease pathology was interesting. Use of these inhibitors to delineate the epigenetic pathways for differentiation also drew considerable attention of the audiences. Dr. Anthony Addlagatta, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad, delivered the third invited lecture in the session on the fragment-based drug discovery approach. His group has developed selective inhibitor molecules to a single isoform (puromycin sensitive aminopeptidase) of a family of nine closely related M1 family aminopeptidases in humans. He demonstrated the use of chemistry, protein X-ray crystallography, biochemistry, and cell biology in systematically developing small fragments to larger molecules with high affinity and selectivity.26,27 The plenary speaker in the sixth technical session was Professor Philip S. Low, Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA, and the session was chaired by Professor D. P. Sarkar, University of Delhi-South Campus, India. Professor Low’s breathtaking lecture was centered around the use of tumortargeted fluorescent dyes for fluorescence-guided surgery. Complete surgical resection of all malignant disease remains the only sure cure for cancer. To facilitate quantitative disease removal, Professor Low and his co-workers have developed tumor-targeted fluorescent dyes that bind and endocytose into cancer cells and thereby ensure their clear visualization during surgery.28,29 In his presentation, Professor Low summarized both preclinical and clinical data on the design, synthesis, and use of tumor-targeted fluorescent dyes for intraoperative imaging of both human cancers and various types of inflammatory lesions. Next, Professor Santanu Bhattacharya, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Vice President, CBS-

was the invited lecture delivered by Dr. Nalam Madhusudhana Rao, CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIRCCMB), Hyderabad, India. That dual function peptide chimeras may offer flexibility in targeted siRNA delivery was the experimental illustration of Dr. Rao’s presentation, wherein an efficient tumor-specific siRNA delivery vehicle was developed by fusing a HER2 binding motif with a doublestranded RNA binding domain.13,14 The second invited lecture in the session was delivered by Professor Amit Basak, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Prof. Basak first discussed recent developments in the exploitation of reactive intermediates such as diradicals in synthesis15 and protein capture research.16 Next, he elaborated on the use of label-assisted LDI MS for detection of metal ions and small molecules including the catechol amine-based neurotransmitters. The third and the last technical session of ICCB-2014 on February 6, 2014 concluded with a short oral presentation by Dr. Neetu Singh, CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India, on tuning nanostructures for enhanced biofunctionality. The day ended with an outstanding cultural program on Indian Bharatnatyam Dance followed by dinner. The fourth technical session of ICCB-2014 started at 9:00 a.m. on February 7, 2014 under the chairmanship of Dr. J. Gowrishankar, Centre for DNA Finger Printing and Diagnostics (CDFD) with a distinguishing plenary lecture by Professor Masatoshi Hagiwara, Kyoto University, Japan. Prof. Hagiwara delved into the challenges to cure hereditary diseases with RNA-targeting chemical compounds. He elaborated on how familial dysautonomia (FD), a hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy caused by mis-splicing resulting from an intronic mutation in IKBKAP gene, would be treatable with RBM24 and RBM38 as the tissue-specific splicing modulators that promote exon20 inclusion of IKBKAP and increase the expression of IKAP protein in FD patient cells.17 He also discussed the new splicing reporter assay with dual color (SPREAD) developed by his group that allowed them to to find the chemical compound RECTAS, which can rectify the aberrant IKBKAP splicing in FD patient fibroblasts. Next, Dr. R. Nagaraj, CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, delivered an invited lecture on defensins. Dr. Nagaraj described their extensively investigated structure− activity relationships in the host-defense antimicrobial peptides: the mammalian defensins. He then showed that the complex structure of defensins is not required for antimicrobial activity and that these peptides exert their activity at the membrane level. Thus, Dr. Nagaraj explained, acquiring resistance against them would be at a very high cost to the microorganisms, and therefore these molecules have potential as future therapeutic agents. The second invited lecture in the session was delivered by Dr. Souvik Maiti, CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), New Delhi. Dr. Maiti talked about his recent studies on the role of RNA G-quadruplexes in untranslated regions (UTR) in translational regulation.18 He also emphasized that quadruplex-mediated gene regulation has great implication in design of genetic circuits and could be used in synthetic biology.19 The session ended with the invited lecture delivered by Dr. Rajkumar Banerjee, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad and Co-convener, ICCB-2014. Dr. Banerjee first discussed on the glucocorticoid receptors’ (GRs) enigmatic roles in cancer and tumor microenvironment. He then delved into the discovery of GR’s anomalous transactivation properties in cancer using a novel cationic liposomal formulation20 and how GR was recently manipulated by his group for the 1226

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lecture on HIV-1 immunogen design. The envelope glycoprotein (env) of human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) is heavily glycosylated. Professor Varadarajan described the role of glycosylation in env folding as well as structure guided design of env derived immunogens that successfully elicited neutralizing antibodies.34,35 Thereafter, two successive short oral presentations were delivered. The first one by Dr. Pinaki Talukdar from IISER-Pune was on the development of fluorescent chemosensors for detection of thiol specifices, and the second one by Mr. Shashi Kant Tiwari, CSIR-IITR, Lucknow was on how nanotized curcumin potently induce adult neurogenesis and reverse cognitive deficits in the amyloid β-induced Alzheimer’s disease model via the WNT/β-Catenin pathway. At the end of the session, the much awaited announcement ofn the winner of the Journal of Biological Chemistry/Herbert Tabor Young Investigator Award (1500 USD plus a Crystal Plaque) was made by Professor Ruma Banerjee, Associate Editor, Journal of Biological Chemistry. The coveted award went to Mr. Gopal Gunanathan Jayaraj from CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, New Delhi for his outstanding poster in ICCB-2014, “Aminoglycoside antibiotics modulate miRNA levels and contribute to its toxicity”. The last technical session of ICCB-2014 (Technical Session X) was chaired by Dr. Krishna M. Ella, Bharat Biotech Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad. The session began with the plenary lecture delivered by Professor Andreas Marx, University of Konstanz, Germany. Prof. Marx presented recent results from his group on the chemical biology of DNA replication. He reported on insights gained into DNA polymerase function when replicating artificial base pairs.36 He then delved into small molecules that interrogate DNA polymerase function37 and new approaches to mimic the orchestration of DNA replication by artificial ubiquitinylation.38 In this concluding session, next Professor K. N. Ganesh, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune and Vice President, CBS-India delivered an invited lecture on cationic collagen peptides and peptide nucleic acids (PNA) with particular focus on probing their entry into cells. Professor Ganesh discussed on the recent efforts from his group toward employing cationic collagen peptide analogues P1−P4 (X-Y-Gly)m, where X/Y are 4(R/S)amino and 4(R/S)-guanidino prolines, for transfection of plasmid DNA encoding green fluorescent protein. Professor Aseem Z. Ansari from University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA delivered the last captivating plenary lecture entitled “Mapping Drug-Genome Interactions in Live Human Cells”. Professor Ansari presented the design, synthesis, and testing of trifunctional polyamides as a general strategy of crosslinking of small molecules for isolation of chromatin (COSMIC) to map their genome-wide binding properties in living cells. Once the scientific sessions were over, Dr. Jitesh Soares, Managing Editor, ACS Chemical Biology invited Professor Siddhartha Roy, Founder President, CBS-India and Professor K. N. Ganesh, Vice President, CBS-India, to the dias for presenting the ICCB-2014 Best Poster Awards generously sponsored by ACS Chemical Biology and Bioconjugate Chemistry. The ACS Chemical Biology Best Poster Awardees were Mr. Somnath Mandal from JNCASR, Bangalore; Mr. Abhishek Chowdhury from CSIR-IICB, Kolkata; and Ms. Sayanti Brahmachari from IACS, Kolkata. The Bioconjugate Chemistry Best Poster Awardees were Mr. Parikshit Moitra from IISc, Bangalore; Ms. Kanika Saxena from CSIR-IGIB, New Delhi; and Mr. Abdullah Sultan from CSIR-CCMB, Hyderabad. After presenting the poster prizes, Professor Siddhartha Roy thanked

India, delivered an invited lecture on his recent work on anticancer drug delivery, to both the drug-sensitive and drugresistant cell lines, mediated by a pH-sensitive self-assembly of a conserved tripeptide sequence (KFG).30 He also spoke on the recently designed cationic cholesterol-based nanocarrier (Chol5LD) for delivering p53-EGFP-c3 plasmid to cancer cells and highlighted the significant reduction in the volume of xenograft tumors in vivo by the delivery Chol-5LD-p53-EGFP-C3 system.31 The session concluded with the invited lecture by Dr. Patrick Midoux, Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire (CBM), CNRS, Orléans, France. Dr. Midoux discussed several advances made by his group toward building an artificial virus. His group demonstrated that DNA escape from endosomes is improved by using polymers and liposomes containing histidine moieties, and nuclear delivery of DNA is favored by the insertion in the DNA nucleic acids sequences specifically recognized by the transcription factor NFkB.32 Dr. Midoux then discussed the findings from his group that have shown that the transfection efficacy is improved when DNA is linked to a microtubule-specific peptide that allows DNA migration toward nuclear envelop.33 The session was followed by a 1.5 h combined tea break and Poster Session II. Once again, as was observed during Poster Session I of the first day, 120 poster participants showed overwhelming enthusiasm in showcasing their important research findings to the delegates of ICCB2014. The seventh technical session of ICCB-2014 was a unique 1 h panel discussion session chaired by Professor Prasanta Kumar Das, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata. In this panel discussion session two distinguished leaders from Indian Pharmaceutical Industries, namely, Mr. Swapan Bhattacharya, TCG Lifesciences Limited, Kolkata and Mr. Vijay Kumar Batra, Albany Molecular Research Inc. (AMRI), Hyderabad, shared their thoughts on “Need of Pharmaceutical Industries: Small Molecules vs Large Molecules”. The technical sessions of the second day of ICCB-2014 concluded with four short oral presentations under Technical Session VIII chaired by Dr. P. Jaisankar, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (CSIR-IICB), Kolkata. In this short oral presentations session, Ms. Kamakshi Dandu, from CSIRCCMB, Hyderabad, spoke on a novel anticancer compound for retinoblastoma; Dr. Debjit Dutta from inStem, Bangalore, talked on dynamic cell surface engineering; Mr. Divakara S. S. Murthy Uppu, JNCASR, Bangalore, discussed how membraneactive polymers resensitize tetracycline antibiotics to clinical isolates of NDM-1 producing bacteria; and Mr. Sanjeev Kumar from the same institute spoke on “Unexpected functional implication of a stable succinimide: A novel mechanism of conferring hyperstability in M. jannaschii GATase”. The day ended with a banquet dinner. The concluding day started with Technical Session IX chaired by Dr. J. S. Yadav, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad. Professor Siddhartha Roy, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata and Founder President of CBS-India enthralled the delegates of ICCB-2014 in the first plenary lecture of the day on how transcription factors recognize their target sites in the genome with high specificity. He proposed that binding of multiple transcription factors to cis regulatory sequences and interaction between them may be a necessary condition for specific regulation of a gene. Prof. Roy also highlighted the importance of protein dynamics in recognition of correct target sequence in the genome. Next, Professor R. Varadarajan from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore delivered an invited 1227

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(14) Jeyarajan, S., Xavier, J., Rao, N. M., and Gopal, V. (2010) Plasmid DNA delivery into MDA-MB-453 cells mediated by recombinant Her-NLS fusion protein. Int. J. Nanomed. 5, 725−733. (15) Mitra, T., Das, J., Maji, M., Das, R., Das, U. K., Chattaraj, P. K., and Basak, A. (2013) A one-pot Garratt-Braverman cyclization and Scholl oxidation route to acene-helicene hybrids. RSC Adv. 3, 19844− 19848. (16) Addy, P. S., Saha, B., Singh, N. D. P., Das, A. K., Bush, J. T., Lejeune, C., Schofield, C. J., and Basak, A. (2013) 1,3,5-Trisubstituted benzenes as fluorescent photoaffinity probes for human carbonic anhydrase II capture. Chem. Commun. 49, 1930−1932. (17) Nishida, A., Kataoka, N., Takeshima, Y., Yagi, M., Awano, H., Ota, M., Itoh, K., Hagiwara, M., and Matsuo, M. (2011) Chemical treatment enhances skipping of a mutated exon in the dystrophin gene. Nat. Commun., DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1306. (18) Agarwala, P., Pandey, S., and Maiti, S. (2013) G-Quadruplexes as tools for synthetic biology. ChemBioChem 14, 2077−2081. (19) Agarwala, P., Pandey, S., Mapa, K., and Maiti, S. (2013) The Gquadruplex augments translation in the 5′ untranslated region of transforming growth factor beta2. Biochemistry 52, 1528−1538. (20) Mukherjee, A., Narayan, K. P., Pal, K., Kumar, J. M., Rangaraj, N., Kalivendi, S. V., and Banerjee, R. (2009) Selective cancer targeting via aberrant behavior of cancer cell- associated glucocorticoid receptor. Mol. Ther. 17, 623−631. (21) Pore, S. K., Choudhary, A., Rathore, B., Ganguly, A., Sujitha, P., Kumar, C. G., Agawane, S. B., Kumar, J. M., Scaria, V., Pillai, B., and Banerjee, R. (2013) Hsp90-targeted miRNA- liposomal formulation for systemic antitumor effect. Biomaterials 34, 6804−6817. (22) Kabil, O., and Banerjee, R. (2014) Enzymology of H2S biogenesis, decay and signaling. Antioxid. Redox Signaling 20, 770−782. (23) Koutmos, M., Kabil, O., Smith, J. L., and Banerjee, R. (2010) Structural basis for substrate activation and regulation by cystathionine beta-synthase (CBS) domains in cystathionine {beta}-synthase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107, 20958−20963. (24) Weeks, C. L., Singh, S., Madzelan, P., Banerjee, R., and Spiro, T. G. (2009) Heme regulation of human cystathionine beta-synthase activity: insights from fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131, 12809−12816. (25) Jafurulla, M., and Chattopadhyay, A. (2013) Membrane lipids in the function of serotonin and adrenergic receptors. Curr. Med. Chem. 20, 47−55. (26) Gumpena, R., Kishor, C., Ganji, R. J., and Addlagatta, A. (2011) Discovery of alpha,beta- and alpha,gamma-diamino acid scaffolds for the inhibition of M1 family aminopeptidases. Chem. Med. Chem. 6, 1971−1976. (27) Gumpena, R., Kishor, C., Ganji, R. J., Jain, N., and Addlagatta, A. (2012) Glu121-Lys319 salt bridge between catalytic and N-terminal domains is pivotal for the activity and stability of Escherichia coli aminopeptidase N. Protein Sci. 21, 727−736. (28) Kennedy, M. D., Jallad, K. N., Thompson, D. H., Ben-Amotz, D., and Low, P. S. (2003) Optical imaging of metastatic tumors using a folate-targeted fluorescent probe. J. Biomed. Opt. 8, 636−641. (29) van Dam, G. M., Themelis, G., Crane, L. M., Harlaar, N. J., Pleijhuis, R. G., Kelder, W., Sarantopoulos, A., de Jong, J. S., Arts, H. J., van der Zee, A. G., Bart, J., Low, P. S., and Ntziachristos, V. (2011) Intraoperative tumor-specific fluorescence imaging in ovarian cancer by folate receptor-alpha targeting: first in-human results. Nat. Med. 17, 1315−1319. (30) Moitra, P., Kumar, K., Kondaiah, P., and Bhattacharya, S. (2014) Efficacious anticancer drug delivery mediated by a pH-sensitive selfassembly of a conserved tripeptide derived from tyrosine kinase NGF receptor. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 53, 1113−1117. (31) Misra, S. K., Naz, S., Kondaiah, P., and Bhattacharya, S. (2014) A cationic cholesterol based nanocarrier for the delivery of p53-EGFPC3 plasmid to cancer cells. Biomaterials 35, 1334−1346. (32) Goncalves, C., Ardourel, M. Y., Decoville, M., Breuzard, G., Midoux, P., Hartmann, B., and Pichon, C. (2009) An optimized extended DNA kappa B site that enhances plasmid DNA nuclear import and gene expression. J. Gene Med. 11, 401−411.

the entire symposium organizing committee members of ICCB2014 for their intense efforts. He, on behalf of Organizing Committee Members of ICCB-2014, profusely thanked all of the industry sponsors, ASBMB/Journal of Biological Chemistry, ACS Chemical Biology, and Bioconjugate Chemistry for so generously extending their support to ICCB-2014 through every possible mode of sponsorship. The symposium concluded with a big “Thank You” note to all of the delegates from Prof. Roy for their enthusiastic participation in ICCB2014.

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REFERENCES

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