Bharath Kumar Gajjela, PhD

Bharath Kumar Gajjela is an Assistant Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, working under Dr. Ming-Ming Zhou. His research focuses on designing and synthesizing novel small molecule modulators to investigate gene transcriptional regulation, with applications in cancer and autoimmune bowel disease.
He specializes in analytical techniques such as chiral-HPLC, LCMS, and NMR instrumentation, and is involved in studying the in vivo pharmacokinetic profiles of in-house drug candidates.
Previously, he completed postdoctoral research at Mount Sinai under Dr. Zhou (2020-2022) and Dr. E. Premkumar Reddy (2018-2020), as well as at Wuhan University of Technology with Dr. Qin (2015-2016). During this time, he developed PROTACs for protein degradation and established synthetic routes for anticancer agents.
He earned his Ph.D. in Medicinal and Organic Chemistry under Dr. Ahmed Kamal at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, focusing on tubulin and kinase-targeting compounds. His contributions include 28 publications in leading scientific journals and four international patents in medicinal chemistry and synthetic organic chemistry.
Additionally, he has industrial experience as a research scientist at Vidgas Science and Technology (2017-2018), leading drug impurity projects, and as a senior chemist at AVRA Laboratory, managing reaction scale-ups from milligrams to kilograms.a