Sunithi Gunasekera

Researcher at Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences; Research; Pharmacognosy

E-mail:
sunithi.gunasekera@uu.se
Visiting address:
BMC, Husargatan 3
75124 Uppsala
Postal address:
Box 591
75124 Uppsala

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Keywords

  • peptides
  • antimicrobial peptides
  • nmr spectroscopy
  • rheumatoid arthritis
  • protein-protein interactions
  • structural biology

Research

My research involves exploring the potential of peptides as drug candidates for therapeutic and diagnostic applications. As a structural biologist with an NMR background, I’m interested in understanding more about the 3D stuctures of natural bioactive peptides and how to use the knowledge from nature to engineer, therapeutically active peptides. Fascinating peptide structures are found in all living organisms. Plants, marine worms, scorpions and marine sponges are some of the organisms from which we have discovered interesting peptide structures in recent times. Aside from having inherent bioactivities, these peptide scaffolds provide stabilizing templates for drug design and can be used as tools in developing peptide drug conjugates, to name a few applications. We work on a number of therapeutic areas, including designing biologically stable peptides for antimicrobial activity and development of peptides as neutralizes of antibodies and diagnostic tools in rheumatoid arthritis. By focusing on peptide epitopes that are part of important protein-protein interactions, we make use of synthetic and bioconjugation chemistry to convert peptides into biochemical tools. Peptide occupy the therapeutic gap between small molecular drugs and larger antibodies or biologics, offering unique opportunities to target complex and intractable biological interactions.

In addition, I have a special interest to follow ethnomedical evidence to discover new drug leads, and contribute to development research in countries in need of capactiy building. With this focus, I have collaborated on various international projects in Sri Lanka and Ethiopia focusing on bioactive peptides.

From 2025 onwards, I will venture into a new area of research involving the blood cancer type, myeloproliferative neoplasm. The focus will be to understand the protein-protein interactions involving mutant calreticulin protein and its cryptic neoepitope in disease pathogenesis, with the overarching goal to develop peptide inhibitors towards more targeted therapies.

Sunithi Gunasekera

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