Dr. Sanghapal D. Sawant, Ph.D

About SDS

Sanghapal D. Sawant (SDS) is currently working as Senior Principal Scientist at CSIR-NCL, Pune. He obtained his Ph.D. jointly from CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, Jammu and SRTM University, Nanded (India). He started his research career in 2006 as a scientist at RRL/CSIR-IIIM, Jammu.

His early research was focused in the area of cancer, skincare product development, anti-infectives, and immune adjuvants. During his postdoctoral research at Kyoto University, Japan, he worked on the synthesis and chemical biology of ligand directed fluorophore tagging of native PI3K protein in living cells for their molecular interaction studies. More specifically, his current research focus is on medicinal chemistry and target-based drug discovery for cancer by inhibiting PI3K/AKT/mTOR axis and development of PDE inhibitors for ED and pulmonary disorders. In infectious diseases, his research group focusses on tuberculosis and gram-negative bacterial infections. His ongoing work on rare diseases like sickle cell anaemia includes multipronged approaches for pain management and other disease conditions that arise due to sickle cell crisis.

Alongside medicinal chemistry, his group is also interested in developing novel synthetic methodologies in catalytic and electrophilic organic transformations and their application in the total syntheses of bioactive natural products and in other areas. His group is also working on Flow Chemistry based transformations and their applications in synthesis of natural products, drugs, APIs and Intermediates.

Academic Profile

• Ph.D. in Chemistry, in Organic synthesis and Medicinal Chemistry, Jointly @ CSIR-IIIM, Jammu, India and Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University, Nanded (MS), India.

       Supervisor- Dr. H.M. Sampath Kumar (Ex-Chief Scientist, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad)

       Thesis Title: Design and Synthesis of Novel Bioactive Molecules & Development of New Synthetic Methods

• M.Sc. in Chemistry (First Class), (2000) from SRTM University, Nanded (MS), India.

• B.Sc. in Chemistry/Anal. Chemistry/Botany, (First Class), (1998), from NES Science College, SRTM University, Nanded (MS), India.

Professional Experience

•      Scientist B (Jr. Scientist) - Feb. 2006 to 2009 - RRL-Jammu/CSIR-IIIM

•      Scientist C - Feb. 2009 to 2012 - CSIR-IIIM, Jammu

•      Senior Scientist - Feb. 2012 to 2016 - CSIR-IIIM, Jammu  (Assistant Professor, AcSIR) 

•      Principal Scientist - Feb. 2016 to 2021 - CSIR-IIIM, Jammu (Associate Professor, AcSIR)

•      Senior Principal Scientist - Feb. 2021 to Till Date - CSIR-IIIM, Jammu (Professor, AcSIR)

• ​     Postdoc-Raman Research Fellow - 2016-2017​ - Kyoto University, Japan