Dr. Vasan Sambandamurthy holds a basic degree in Medical Microbiology and a Ph.D. in bacterial genetics. He was the recipient of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellowship for pursuing post-doctoral research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York on mycobacterial genetics. His research findings were instrumental in securing a multimillion dollar NIH PO1 grant for evaluating the use of attenuated TB strains as trivalent vaccines against TB, Malaria and HIV.

He held leadership position at Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases, Singapore with responsibility for building strategy and leading multidisciplinary global discovery teams towards the delivery of preclinical candidate drugs against tuberculosis. He received the prestigious Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) team innovation award for the identification of target for the natural product cyclomarin.

At AstraZeneca, as a Lead Biologist developed strategy and supported the preclinical evaluation of AZD5847 and a novel antimalarial molecule towards clinical development. AZD5847 has recently completed phase 2a trials for the treatment of multi-drug resistance tuberculosis. He has experience in portfolio and project management from early target identification to preclinical development of small molecules. He has published over 35 original research articles in international journals and a co-inventor on three patents.

He is currently a Senior Lead Investigator at MSCTR and is building a research platform to develop siRNA based therapeutics in collaboration with Biocon and Quark Pharmaceuticals. In addition, he is establishing an antimicrobial surveillance program to map the dynamics and evolution of drug resistance in bacterial pathogens implicated in hospital acquired infections.