Shajila Siricilla, Ph.D.

Dr. Siricilla received her Pharmacy bachelor's degree from the MGR Medical University (India) and Pharmaceutical Science doctoral degree from The University of Tennessee Health Science Center (Memphis, TN). Her doctoral work focused on the discovery of novel antibacterial molecules with molecular targets against problematic pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and multidrug resistant nosocomial pathogens. She joined the Herington Lab in 2017. Dr. Siricilla currently works on a project entailing a phenotypic high-throughput screen of large compound libraries to identify novel small molecules and molecular targets that regulate uterine myometrial contractions with high selectivity. She has developed a combination high-throughput assay to identify synergistic drug combinations to improve their tocolytic efficacy and therapeutic index.  She has identified a natural product, mundulone, and FDA-approved drugs with tocolytic efficacy in mono- and combination-therapy with current tocolytics. She currently has developed an independent line of investigation focused on drug discovery for infection induced preterm birth..