Raghavan Varadarajan
IISc, Bengaluru
Raghavan Varadarajan is President of the Indian Academy of Sciences (2025-2027) and Professor in the Molecular Biophysics Unit at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. His research spans protein stability, folding and design, and extends to the development of viral immunogens (notably for influenza and SARS-CoV-2). His laboratory at IISc uses biophysical and structural approaches to engineer thermostable vaccine candidates and to probe fundamental questions of protein biophysics. His honours include the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Biological Sciences and the 2024 Tata Transformation Prize. He has also held key leadership roles at the Academy over the past decade.
Session 1A
Enhancing the stability and efficacy of viral vaccines
Most current viral vaccine formulations require low temperature storage. This is a major impediment to widespread deployment, and contributed to the highly skewed distribution of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. Despite recent advances in the use of AI/ML for protein structure prediction and design, prediction of stabilizing mutations for complex, oligomeric proteins remains challenging. We have developed general approaches to rapidly isolate stabilized protein variants, and to map regions on the protein surface that are targeted by antibodies following immunization. Using this methodology, we have designed thermostable derivatives of an important domain of the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and other sarbecoviruses. Several of these formulations can be stored at $37^\circ$C for several weeks without loss of protective efficacy. Using related approaches, we have developed multiple influenza vaccine formulations to protect against seasonal and pandemic influenza. One of these has been shown to be safe and well tolerated in a Phase 1 clinical trial in Australia and further clinical development in India is ongoing.