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Gurunathan Laxmikanthan, Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP Photo

Gurunathan Laxmikanthan

Associate / Boston

Overview

Gurunathan Laxmikanthan, Ph.D. is an associate in Nutter’s Intellectual Property Department. He provides assistance on patent prosecution, freedom-to-operate analysis in Series A, B, and C funding, interference proceedings, and infringement enforcement strategies in the fields of biochemistry, immunology, molecular and structural biology, and small molecules. Venture capital firms rely on Guru to conduct intellectual property due diligence. He frequently advises startup pharmaceutical and biotech companies. 

Guru’s extensive experience in biotech and life sciences encompasses many areas of research, including proteases, recombinases, organic and inorganic chemistry, structure-based drug design, electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, and molecular modeling. He has developed novel structural methods using methylases to improve the contrast and signal-to-noise ratio for the feature of small macromolecular complexes in electron microscopy. Guru has successfully engineered a bi-directional Cre recombinase into a unidirectional co-factor dependent recombinase, identical to the classic paradigm system of Lambda integrase. In addition, he has designed a new method for assaying potential activators of proteases using hybrid proteins containing fragments from Fibroblast growth factors and sequences of preforms of kallikreins. He has also solved a high-resolution crystal structure of human kallikrein 1 during his graduate work.

Prior to joining Nutter, Guru was a technology specialist at a New England-based intellectual property law firm. Previously, he performed postdoctoral research in structural biology and molecular biology and was a research associate at Brown University, where he worked on the structural characterization of the bacteriophage lambda intasome complex using cryo-electron microscopy.

A member of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, Guru received the Outstanding Pre-Doctoral Fellow Research Award from the American Heart Association. He has taught numerous laboratory and programming courses to undergraduates.

Guru earned his J.D. from Suffolk University, where he was a Trustee Academic Scholar, Phi Delta Phi Honor Society inductee, and LPS Distinguished Oral Advocate. In addition, Guru earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Florida State University, his M.S. in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, and his B.Sc. in chemistry from St. Joseph’s College in India.

Experience

Experience

  • Abveris

    Nutter advised Abveris (formally known as AbX Biologics, Inc.), a privately-held in vivo antibody discovery services company, in connection with its acquisition by Twist Bioscience Corporation (NASDAQ: TWST), a leading and rapidly growing synthetic biology and genomics company that has developed a disruptive DNA synthesis platform to industrialize the engineering of biology.

News & Insights

Honors

Honors

  • Massachusetts Super Lawyers Rising Stars, 2023-2024

  • The Best Lawyers in America “Ones to Watch”, 2025

Education & Admissions

Education

Suffolk University Law School, J.D., cum laude
Florida State University, Ph.D.
Indian Institute of Technology, M.S.
St. Joseph's College

Admissions

  • Massachusetts
  • New York
  • U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

Industry Expertise

A member of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, Guru received the Outstanding Pre-Doctoral Fellow Research Award from the American Heart Association.

Noteworthy

  • Massachusetts Super Lawyers Rising Stars, 2023-2024

  • The Best Lawyers in America “Ones to Watch”, 2025
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