Senior Lecturer Rajesh Chandramohanadas

Research Interest

Our research focuses on red blood cell biology and biochemistry, with the primary aim of understanding erythrocyte deformations arising from chemical/ oxidative damage, infectious agents (malaria) or life-style diseases. Using multi-disciplinary approaches combining chemical biology, analytical biochemistry and mechano-biology, we study mechanisms and mediators driving host selection and cytolysis facilitating parasite egress by apicomplexan parasites. Another evolving facet of our research investigates the molecular determinants of red blood cell tropism in plasmodium spp, with over-arching implications in progressive parasite adaptations, zoonosis and drug resistance.

Representative Publications

1. Loh DR, Yong WX, Yapeter J, Karupppasamy S and Chandramohanadas R*. A Deep Learning Approach to the Diagnosis of Malaria Infection: Automated and Rapid Cell Counting, Object Detection and Instance Segmentation using Mask-RCNN. Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics (In Press).
2. Patra A, Hingamire T, Belekar M, Xiong A, Subramanian G, Bozdech Z, Preiser P, Shanmugam D and Chandramohanadas R*. Whole Cell Phenotypic Screening Of MMV Pathogen Box identifies Specific Inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum merozoite maturation and egress. Antimicrobial Agents & Chemotherapy, 2020 Apr 21;64(5). pii: e01802-19. doi: 10.1128/AAC.01802-19.
3. Subramanian G, Sadeer A, Naidu R, Mukherjee K, Tripathi A, Pullarkat S and Chandramohanadas R*. Evaluation of ferrocenyl phosphines as potent antimalarials targeting the digestive vacuole function of Plasmodium falciparum. Dalton Transactions, 2019 Jan 3. doi: 10.1039/c8dt04263b.
4. Li H, Yang J, Chu TT, Naidu R, Chandramohanadas R, Dao M and Karniadakis G. Cytoskeleton remodeling induces membrane stiffness and instability changes as reticulocytes mature. Biophysical Journal, April 2018. 114(8):2014-2023. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2018.03.004.
5. Chu TT, Sinha A, Malleret B, Suwanarusk B, Park EJ, Naidu R, Das R, Dutta B, Ong ST, Verma NK, Chan JK, Nosten F, Rénia L, Sze SK, Russell B & Chandramohanadas R*. Quantitative Mass Spectrometry of Human Reticulocytes Reveal Proteome-wide Modifications During Maturation. British Journal of Haematology, 2018 Jan, 180(1): 118-133.
6. Subramanian S, Belekar MA, Shukla A Tong JX, Sinha A, Chu TT, Kulkarni AS, Preiser PR, Reddy DS, Tan KSW, Shanmugam D and Chandramohanadas R*. Targeted phenotypic screening in Plasmodium falciparum and Toxoplasma gondii reveals novel modes of action for MMV Malaria Box molecules, mSphere, 2018 Jan 17;3(1). pii: e00534-17.
7. Dearnley M, Chu T, Zhang Y, Looker O, Huang C, Klonis N, Yeoman J, Kenny S, Arora M, Osborne JM, Chandramohanadas R*, Zhang S*, Dixon MW*, Tilley L*. Reversible host cell remodeling underpins deformability changes in malaria parasite sexual blood stages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016; 113 (17): 4800-5.