Dr. Raghavendar Reddy Sanganna Gari was awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association for his proposal Molecular level characterization of conformational changes in TRPV2 channel triggered by therapeutic agents and lipids. Dr. Sanganna Gari is a postdoctoral associate in anesthesiology, working in the lab of Dr. Simon Scheuring.
More than half of current drugs target membrane proteins that reside in cellular membranes. Dr. Sanganna Gari's research concerns TRPV2, a membrane protein that is involved in muscle contraction and diseases of the heart muscle. His study asks how two drugs (probenecid and tranilast) and signaling lipids (phosphatidylinositol 4, 5-bisphoshate) modify the structure of TRPV2 and favor its opening or closing.
Dr. Sanganna Gari's work uses a novel imaging technique called high-speed atomic force microscopy (HS-AFM) that collects movies of biological molecules in order to monitor the TRPV2 channel opening and closing in response to drugs at submolecular lateral resolution.