Srinivas Oruganti

Whole-Time Director, DRILS

Dr. Srinivas Oruganti is Director, DRILS and also heads the Center for Process Research and Innovation at the Institute. He received his Ph.D from the Indian Institute of Science in the area of photoswitchable cluster glycosides, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire involved in the design and synthesis of glycocluster–tumor antigenic peptide conjugates for glycotargeting of dendritic cells.

Dr. Oruganti is actively engaged in academia-industry collaborations in the pharmaceutical sector in India and has been championing industry oriented process chemistry programs at the Dr. Reddy’s Institute of Life Sciences at Hyderabad. He is credited with setting up an industry-oriented chemistry research unit (Center for Process Research and Innovation) at the Dr. Reddy’s Institute of Life Sciences. He has actively contributed to several successful medicinal chemistry collaborations with several pharma and biotech companies, involving hit-to-lead identification and lead optimization (SAR activity and focused libraries) for different therapeutic areas. He has independently managed teams constituted by several masters- and Ph.D-level chemists in successfully executing projects in diverse areas of organic chemistry, bioconjugation, solid-phase immobilization, and novel carbohydrate and peptide-based drug delivery systems. He has been acknowledged for his ability to blend his carbohydrate and glyco-targeting background seamlessly with his synthetic experience in medicinal chemistry research to arrive at elegant solutions to the research programs of both industry and academia. Dr. Oruganti has contributed significantly to various aspects of early stage process development of active pharmaceutical ingredients – ranging from therapeutic areas like diabetes, cardio-vascular, multiple sclerosis and cancer. He has also been widely credited for his role in arriving at novel robust and scalable synthetic routes to various pharmaceuticals that have been successfully translated into chemical processes and resulted in multiple DMF filings. His pivotal contributions pertain to bringing an active pharmaceutical ingredient to market as a generic drug through innovation in chemical process development and offering a strategic vantage point to any pharmaceutical company in its efforts to carve out a niche for itself in ever challenging generic drug market. Dr. Oruganti’s contributions to chemical process R&D are characteristically focused on continuous process of incremental improvement and gradual simplification of the existing chemical processes to the API and related intermediates, through an appropriate choice of chemo-, organo- or biocatalysis to target sustainable chemistry. Such a paradigm has been successfully applied to ideation and proof-of-concept demonstration of novel synthetic routes to even complex APIs. Dr. Oruganti has an active interest in chemical process development of organo-electronic materials, and characterization of such materials. He has also contributed to stable-isotope labelling strategies and their application of labelled nutraceuticals and NCEs. Dr. Oruganti has been contributing to promotion of academic-industry linkages to promote the pharmaceutical innovation in the country and is a member of the Think-Tank of PHARMEXCIL-India to reduce API import dependence in the country. His work has led to 38 research publications and more than 60 patents.