Ganapathy Sivakumar
University of Houston, USA
Biography
Sivakumar Ganapathy is Professor of Molecular Plant Biotechnology at the Department of Engineering Technology at University of Houston. His primary research interest is engineering of commercially important plant alkaloids metabolic pathways to make medicines that can enhance human health. He is particularly interested in colchicine synthetic biotechnology and biomanufacturing of biopharmaceuticals. Sivakumar invented biorhizome technology for pharmaceutical colchicine manufacturing. Sivakumar's lab studies how gene circuits uniquely affect colchicine biosynthesis in Colchicaceae, uses genomic approaches to generate transcriptomes and microRNAomes in colchicine-producing biorhizomes and to identify and characterize the genes and gene elements controlling the colchicine biosynthetic pathway in Gloriosa superba. Other research focuses include computational mapping and electron crystallographic modeling of colchicine and its semisynthetics and developing potential anticancer medicines. He is internationally recognized in the field of plant-based natural products and is a pioneer in the unique biomanufacturing of biorhizome-based colchicine. He is also on the editorial board of several journals and serves as an expert of grant proposals and numerous scientific journals.
Abstract
Abstract : Biomanufacturing of biopharmaceuticals