Dr. Dhandapany Perundurai

Dr. Dhandapany Perundurai is a full faculty (Associate Professor/ Scientist F) at the inStem, Bangalore having more than 24 years of research experience in the field of human genomics, stem cells, and animal models of cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Perundurai earned his MSC and PhD degrees from India in 2000 and 2008 respectively. He completed his post-doctoral training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City and was promoted to Instructor in Pediatrics 2014. He joined inStem and Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, USA in 2015 as a joint Assistant Professor and as an Associate Professor/ Scientist F from 2022.

Dr. Perundurai is interested in identifying novel genes, mechanisms and drugs for cardiovascular diseases using a multi-model approach involving various model organisms. He is an expert in cardiac genomics, stem cells, organoids, gene editing, and animal models. He is a recipient of various national and international awards and fellowships including DBT, DST-SERB, ICMR- rare disease challenge grant, Ramanujan fellowship, American Heart Association (AHA)-Scientist Development Award, Welcome Trust fellowship, Centre Franco-Indien pour la Promotion de la Recherche Avancée (CEFIPRA), AHA International Visiting Professorship etc.

Cardiomyopathies are one of the well-recognised genetic diseases, and their delay in diagnosis will lead to sudden cardiac death, heart failure and impair the quality of life. Understanding genetic causes will help in early identification and planning appropriate treatment strategies. However, a significant number of patients’ genetic studies reveal the absence of reported cardiomyopathy-related pathogenic gene mutation, suggesting that novel disease-associated genes remain to be discovered hampering correct drug choice.  Dr Perundurai’s research program-1 is geared to bridge these gaps. To achieve this program, Dr Perundurai collaborated with various clinicians across the country to collect patients’ samples. Using the patient clinical samples and newer pipeline, Dr Perundurai’s lab have discovered various novel genes published these in International reputed journals. He had more than 40 papers in various prestigious and reputed international journals including Nature Genetics, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, Science Advances, Cell Reports, EMBO, IScience, NPJ Genomic Medicine, Journal of Medical Genetics etc. His lab identified many novel genes including ADIPOR1 as a first shared genetic link between cardiomyopathy and diabetes.  To maximize the potential for new gene discoveries and ethnic-specific comparison, Dr Perundurai lab generated an Indian healthy aging reference genome dataset.

This exciting gene discovery allows us to explore the molecular mechanisms of gene action relevant to human cardiac pathology. Dr Perundurai’s research program-2 and 3 addresses the global mode of mechanistic links and therapeutic targets using model organisms ranging from patient-specific- iPSCs to transgenic mice. Using these methods, Dr Perundurai have showed that each novel gene depends on different signaling cascades that culminate into cardiac hypertrophy underscoring importance of gene-based curative therapies for cardiomyopathies.

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